The real culture of Ghana (2)
From my own experiences and the experiences of others, I have to say that it has become our culture now that a Ghanaian will not help a fellow. Ghanaian unless he can profit from it.
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If he cannot see how he can benefit directly and personally from the help he is in a position to give, the Ghanaian is not interested in helping. As a people, we are no longer interested in receiving a thank you for a good deed or for providing a service for which we are paid.
We want a thank you that is said with money or with gifts or in the case of a woman with her body.
One manifestation of this culture is a phenomenon that is becoming very common in Accra. On every street where there are potholes, you will find a young man with a shovel and a bucket of sand pretending to be filling the potholes but he is really not filling them. He is using the pretence of filling them to ask for money from drivers.
That is at the individual level but the culture works at the public or official level as well. I have discovered that in Ghana most public officers will not do what they have to do to serve their communities if they will not gain personally or privately from the service or the project the community needs.
A bridge in Ghana would become a death trap but there is a public officer whose duty is to ensure that the bridge is in good repair. But if he cannot see how he will make money from keeping the bridge in good repair then he does not care how dangerous and unsafe the bridge becomes; he will simply not do anything about it. But let him see how he can profit personally and directly from carrying out the repairs and it will be done.
There is a solution to any problem you see in Ghana, and there are public officers tasked to ensure that it is done. But if those officers cannot see any way of lining their pockets by discharging their duty and providing the solutions to the problems then the problems will not be addressed.
This tendency is so widespread that I am afraid we will have to see it now as part of our culture. And the culture states that the Ghanaian will not carry out his duty to the larger community if he cannot see any way of enriching himself from discharging that duty.
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And because of this culture, the lives of Ghanaians are becoming more difficult and stressful and unfulfilling every day. Because of this culture, Ghana loses projects every day.
Because of this culture, some roads will never be repaired or even constructed. Because of this culture, the average Ghanaian will be deprived of basic services other people take for granted.
It is sad but in Ghana money talks. In Ghana, money is the real mover and shaker. And this is not a recent phenomenon.
If you read Lee Kuan Yew’s book, ‘From Third World to First World,’ you will see why he got disgusted with Ghana (the only time he visited Ghana).
He was so disappointed with this culture of ours that he swore never to visit Ghana again and he said to his aides, “With this kind of attitude and culture, a nation is finished.”
The good thing about any culture is that it can be changed. As Hoebel said: Culture is an integrated system of learned behaviour patterns. If it is learned, we can unlearn it and relearn something better.
We need to realise that this culture will not take us anywhere and we need (as people) to decide that we can do better and that our fellow Ghanaians deserve better and Ghana definitely deserves better.