WHERE IS OUR SENSE OF PATRIOTISM?

“A great Civilisation is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within – W. Durant”.

Waking up every morning to the Ghana National Anthem on Radio Ghana in the late 90s was a source of re-energisation and re-ignition of our nationalism n patriotism. Those were the days when Ghana was first. In fact, those days we really lived the words of President J.F. Kennedy that is ‘ask what you can do for your country not what your country can do for you. It was therefore not uncommon to see school children pause whatever they were doing on hearing of the National Anthem. It was more than obligatory to vacate your seat to elders in buses and other forms of public transport then. Our flag was a source of pride and inspiration. But what do we see today? Am therefore unsurprised that no radio station starts transmission with the ‘God bless our Homeland Ghana’ tune anymore, not even state owned media houses bankrolled with our money. They are always in a hurry to sell Advert spaces to companies for commercial gains to the detriment of the National course. Pathetic!
This country is sick, we seriously need a change of direction; that is, if we even have any current direction at all. I feel sad seeing the rate at which we are dumping patriotism for patronage. Young people today feel no sense of obligation to Mother Ghana. It is just unfortunate. Even though we are supposed to have leaders, we are gradually sliding into the realms of an acephalous society. It is very easy to point the ‘culpability fingers’ to the west as the source of our woes as a country. We forget to realize that we could not have been where we are today if we had not destroyed ourselves from within.

Today University lecturers who earn four figure salaries, quickly jump out of the class room and abandon their work as the first option of redress when there are labour/salary structure distortion. Interestingly most if not all the time, basic salary isn’t the cause of the unrests, but allowances. The president of the Ghana Medical Association during a media interview during one of their usual and almost ritual strikes was reported to have said ‘People die anyway and so if doctors strike results in deaths, there is nothing wrong with it’’. Ahahaha, my Akan people at this point will say ‘Anokwa’! Training a medical Doctor is one of the painful but necessary investments the state makes daily. What that GMA president forgot is that, the toils of the pure water seller on the street, the sweat of the scrap collector at ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ and the little taxes on the pre mix fuel used by my fisherman kinsmen contribute to their training. If he thinks there is nothing wrong with this people dying, don’t you think this country is sick? The painful part of this scenario is the cluelessness and recklessness with which Fair Wages and Salaries commission deals with the labour unions. Even though greed, selfishness and unpatriotism are the main factors I see fueling these labour unrests, the government of the day has no excuse for the shambolic way they handle the problem. Even in the midst of this clear show of ineptitude by the state agencies detailed constitutionally to handle labour issues, where is the sense of patriotism in the workers? As I talk to you now, most UTAG members have already gone to the bank for their August salaries. To them , Alexander Solzhenitsyn says “Patriotism means unqualified and unwavering love for the nation, which implies not uncritical eagerness to serve, not support for unjust claims, but frank assessment of its vices and sins, and penitence for them’.

In the heart of all these, can you imagine what would happen the day the trotro driver decides to park his trotro due to high fuel prices, the kenkey seller refuses to cook as a way of protesting the high cost of maize and even the neglect of the farmers who plant it, the market women at Makola and Agbogbloshie striking for the way their tolls taken from the city authorities evaporate into thin air (Honestly, don’t you think they are justified if they strike to demand what their tolls are being used for, after all our major markets have seen no renovation in decades)? It’s been over two weeks since floods destroyed lives and properties in the Bunkurugu constituency and relief items are yet to get to the people. Even though some media outlets told us NADMO has sent relief items there somewhere last week, I wept after seeing what the poor people there are undergoing on TV yesterday. So who released that misleading news about relief items reaching the people? Hmmm! So what if these victims of such a callous societal neglect decide to ‘strike’ too? Can this country ever stand a strike action by students who pay exorbitant fees, yet not taught by those supposed to do so? If over 500 armed policemen were deployed to stop a harmless Vandal procession, can the state support an ‘aggressive’ strike when UNITY HALL, KATANGA ,CASFORD and the not so daring but ‘serious’ BOBO BOYS decide to hit the street the same day? The above mentioned people suffer the worse form of deliberate communal neglect in this country, yet they give it to God. They say goodbye to their families every morning, go to hustle to contribute their quota to national development. It is worth noting that nobody calls them to any negotiation even though their fundamental human rights are trampled upon daily. Who cares about the hundreds of young kayayo girls who struggle for sleeping space at night in front of stores in Darkuman and Kokomba Market?
To those who think the best way to display how relevant and powerful they are to National development, is unleashing pain and suffering on the helpless majority of Ghanaians through strike actions and tactless negotiations I wish to refer to Psalm 12:5, ‘because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will ARISE, says the LORD. I will protect them from those who malign them’. We always forget that others laid down their lives for us to even breathe freely today. Others are seriously utilizing their brains to develop their countries, why not us? The time to wake up asking what you can do for this country is now. And it starts from you and I, otherwise we cannot stand the alternative we gradually breeding...

(September 16, 2013

Nii Boye (c)