Nana Nketsia bemoans over-reliance on foreign culture
The Omanhen of Essikado Traditional Area, Nana Kobina Nketsia V, has bemoaned the over-reliance of Ghanaians on Western culture in recent times.
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He said the phenomenon had retarded the growth of the nation and called for its immediate reversal, urging Ghanaians to have deep appreciation for their culture and history.
“When a culture is de-linked from its history in all frames of its existential reference institutionally, educationally, legally and psychologically, it leads to history being projected with an image of being culturally irrelevant and economically unrewarding,” he said.
Nana Nketsia was speaking at the 4th Kobina Sekyi Memorial Lectures in Accra on Tuesday to commemorate the ideals, views and thoughts of Kobina Sekyi, a Ghanaian who dedicated his life and works to the defence of the customs, laws, institutions and ideals of traditional society of the Gold Coast, in particular and West Africa, in general.
The lecture, organised by the Kobina Sekyi Memorial Lectures Committee in partnership with the Political Science Students Association (POSSA), offered the platform for participants to understand the usefulness of culture, institutions and ideals of the Ghanaian society.
The committee is a voluntary body of scholars who have dedicated part of their time to project the ideals of Kobina Sekyi and challenging Ghanaians to probe his relevance for contemporary governance.
Applied History, Sekyi-ism and contending futures
Deliberating on the theme for the lectures, Nana Nketsia said the wealth of a society was largely dependent on its rich history and culture, adding that “any time one bathes in one’s history, the society renews itself and bathes in wealth”.
“Currently, since a society such as ours has been de-linked from its history or has made the subject irrelevant, its future has become irrelevant and is anchored to depression or escapist phenomenon or unrewarding propaganda serving as history,” he stated.
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According to him, a society caught in the loss of memory of its history was incapable of self-understanding, equating that to Ghana.
History is the power of rediscovery
He added that if Ghana would appreciate its history and culture, it would possess enough power to resist anything Western against the progress of the nation.
To apply history, Nana Nketsia indicated that one ought to dispassionately confront one’s history from one’s ancestral subjectivity.
It was within the sobriety of that challenge, he said, that the bitter lessons of history could reveal themselves.
The Omanhen added that to apply history, one had to start with a penetrating examination of one’s past and speak the bitter truth to oneself.
Be the African that you are
A Research Fellow at the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG), Prof. Sam N. Woode, called on the participants not to ignore their “Africanese”.
Prof. Woode, who was also the chairman for the occasion, said it was wrong for Ghanaians to put away their culture and behave like Westerners, describing that as a hybrid African attitude.