Education must improve our native ideas — Nana Nketsia

The Omanhene of Essikado Traditional Area in the Western Region, Nana Kobina Nketsia V, has called for an educational system that can help Africans develop and improve their native ideas, customs, manners and institutions.

That, he said, would enable Africans of the present generation to build the needed character to pass down to the next generation of children the essence of being an African.

The paramount chief explained that the fundamental evidence of having a character was the ability to pass on in a very accurate way, what it means to be normal in society.

Delivering the third in the series of the 57th J.B. Danquah Memorial Lectures in Accra on February 28, Nana Nketsia stated that Africans in general shared a single philosophical system which was in its real sense and was not subject to the betterment of an individual, but to the whole community.

"In Africa, it is social ownership and not individual ownership," he stated.

The lecture series

The J.B. Danquah Memorial Lectures organised by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS), in honour of Dr Joseph Boakye Danquah, an astute politician and member of the ‘Big Six’, has occurred every year since 1968.

Usually held over three days, the theme for this year’s lectures was: “In search of a transformative paradigm: Authenticity and the African future.”

Taking his turn on the third day, the paramount chief spoke on the topic: “Creating an alternative dream,” to the admiration of a large audience at the Kame Nkrumah Auditorium of the GAAS Hall in Accra.

The section created a platform for the speaker to provide possible guidelines, mission and purpose for the re-awakening of Africa in the year 2024.

Miseducation

Nana Nketsia noted that it was not responsible for any African generation to lose its indigenous ancestral investment and core values and cultural knowledge of its predecessors because of their miseducation.

He said it was not only a disservice to the future of the continent, but a betrayal of the ancestral heritage by the present generation.

He asked fellows and other guests, as well as participants on the lectures whether they “were leaving Africanacity or European-acquired culture to the next generation.”

Referring to one of his favourite quotes in the Holy Scriptures he stated: "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.

If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

Illegal mining

Nana Nketsia also expressed worry about the impunity with which illegal mining activities were degrading the environment without any regard for the consequences in the future.

"Sometimes when I look at the galamsey issue in Ghana, for instance, I get very worried, and I keep asking: To whose interest are we destroying the environment?

"The trees that are being felled are needed for medicinal purposes, but we destroy them in the name of harvesting timber for exports, very sad," he said.

Stop imitating the West

Leveraging a quote from the German-born theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein, which read in parts "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them," the  Essikado chief said likewise, Africans could not go into the same incubator that had created problems for them.

"Power imitators rely on the sources of the original power to endure.

 In Africa, those who secure power rely often on the tool of oppression put in play by those who rearranged Africa in their interest," he stated, further advising that Africans should not in any way or form, imitate the people who invaded their continent and ripped them of their dignity, culture and wealth.