By Kofi Akordor
THE Upper East Regional Director of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), Mr Peter H. Mensah, has made a serious observation which should not be ignored by serious-minded Ghanaians.
While inaugurating an inter-party dialogue committee in Bolgatanga, he said Ghana’s democracy was resting on wobbling legs, thereby making it volatile.
“Any careless or reckless infraction can easily crumble it. There is the need to recognise this fact and take collective steps to change the trend,” he stated.
This is the naked truth that should be made patently clear to all Ghanaians.
Since 1992 when the country embarked on another journey on the democratic path, every election has been faced with its own challenges. However, the progress made in the electoral process has not seen a corresponding improvement in our democratic culture.
Contrary to expectation that with time the democratic process will mature and eliminate human excesses such as insults and violent behaviour, we seem rather to be drifting more and more towards anarchy.
Last week, I listened to a playback of some previous programmes on an Accra radio station. I was surprised at the raw filth that flowed freely from the mouths of Members of Parliament (MPs), ministers of state and other top political figures in the country.
Everybody has spoken against the phenomenon but nobody seems to care to effect a change in our attitude in our political discourse.
All the political leaders have made public condemnation of insults but, strangely, none of them is on record as having condemned any party member for fouling the air with insults against an opponent. Both those in government and opposition have on several occasions displayed their penchant for dirty words and always created the impression that this country is at war with itself.
The irony of our situation is that while all parties claim they are for peace and non-violent speeches, they have all in a way created specialised communication groups whose business it is to use the media, especially radio, to launch verbal attacks on their perceived political opponents.
Whether politicians think insulting opponents will improve their fortunes or weaken those of their opponents is yet to be proved. This was made clear by Professor Kofi Agyekum, the Head of the Linguistics Department of the University of Ghana, Legon, last Thursday, when he delivered his inaugural lecture on: “Kasapa-Kasahuam ‘polite language’: Towards perfect communication, national cohesion and peaceful co-existence”.
The linguistic professor observed that the country’s political atmosphere was losing the traditional value of good and polite language, with disagreements being played out by insults. He went further to remind politicians that insults would not win them votes.
We hope this message will sink in well with our politicians. It must be admitted that one group which is playing a major role in this canker is the media. Media owners and their employees who want to be described as journalists have debased the profession and made practitioners appendages of politicians.
The 1992 Constitution guarantees media freedom and this has been seriously over-exploited and brought this country to where we are today. This is an election year and, as stated earlier, the Electoral Commission is making every effort to improve upon the electoral process. This year, for example, it is gearing up to start biometric registration which will inject more transparency in the electoral system.
All these efforts will not bring the desired results if the citizens do not educate themselves on the most civil ways of communicating their thoughts, ideas and opinions. We may have the best electoral system, but if we do not control the words of our mouths, we still risk a national tragedy, as had happened in other countries.
So far, political leaders have not proved to be allies in the crusade against foul language, insults and ethnocentric sentiments that have found place in the newspapers and on the airwaves, since they are always struggling to outdo one another in the war of words.
We are not a special people, as some may want to believe. We can only be special if we learn from the mistakes of others and do the right thing. The radio stations are our best hope if they will not present the platform for people to create turmoil with their mouths in their studios.
We came close in 2008. We may not have another chance unless we accept the fact that multi-party democracy means different ideas towards the same direction – national development – unless others have different motives for going into politics.
Mr Mensah has said it in far away Bolgatanga — we are on wobbling legs. Let no one deceive us that we are an island. What happened somewhere can happen here if the conditions are the same. With this realization, we can make a conscious effort to protect our national image, security and stability.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordorblogspot.com
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Lessons from Tetteh-Quarshie to Mallam Junction
By Kofi Akordor
Last Wednesday, February 15, 2012, the President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, led Ghanaians and other dignitaries to inaugurate the 14.1-kilometre Tetteh Quarshie Interchange-Mallam Junction expressway.
This project, which is the most visible among the compacts executed by the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) and funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) of the United States of America (USA), can be described as a gift from the government and the people of the US to the people of Ghana.
It was, therefore, not out of place when both the erstwhile Kufuor government and the current Mills administration came to an agreement to christen the highway the George Walker Bush Motorway, after the US President who gave a favourable response to Ghana’s application to access funds from the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA).
Ghana’s share of US$547 million was one of the single largest to be enjoyed by any Third World country and we need to salute all those who played diverse roles in carrying the Americans along with us in our supplications for such a huge amount of cash to support our infrastructure development.
The voice of Sheikh I.C. Quaye, the then Greater Accra Regional Minister and leading member of the Kufuor government could be heard ringing with excitement when it was announced that the US government had gratuitously granted our dear country the colossal amount of US$547 million as our share of the MCA.
“The money is big ooo!” he virtually screamed, and even went over the bar to declare that all the money given to Ghana since the time of Nkrumah could not add up to that MCA money.
Well, money is nothing until it is put to productive use. Those who have experienced the George Walker Bush Motorway, either driving or being driven on it, have described it as a whole new experience. Without anybody trying to do politics, we have cause to celebrate a project that has given Accra, our national capital, a face of modernity and we should aspire to move beyond this point and begin to look into the future for more of such magnificent projects.
As our initial excitement begins to wane, we must try picking some lessons from the successful execution of that project and all others executed under the supervision of MiDA.
First, we must admit and acknowledge the fact that apart from the funding and oversight supervision which came from the US, the projects were largely supervised at the local level by MiDA, a wholly Ghanaian body headed by Mr Martin Eson-Benjamin as the Chief Executive Officer.
The MiDA Board is chaired by Professor Samuel K. Sefa-Dedeh.
According to information available to this writer, there are 74 Ghanaians of various professional backgrounds and grades on the staff of MiDA. If, today, we are celebrating a good job done, credit must go to Ghanaian expertise and professionalism.
It means that if our professionals fail us elsewhere in this country, the issue will not be about qualification and competence but something else. It could be a problem of poor leadership and lack of direction, undue interference from higher authorities or lack of logistics or motivation.
Very often, politicians take the wrong decisions based on poor judgement, self-interest, cronyism, blind loyalty, nepotism, tribalism and moral corruption and then turn round to question the competence and ability of our professionals.
The failure of almost all our state enterprises, which paved the way for their sale to foreign interests, had nothing to do with the inability of the Ghanaian professional to measure up to his counterparts elsewhere. It had more to do with those who were at the helm of affairs who would not allow the right things to be done.
When we look back critically, Ghana Airways, Ghana Telecom and many others should not have gone the way they did if successive governments had not allowed personal and narrow interests to take the better part of them by employing the wrong people to positions of responsibility to dance to their tunes or cut off those who wanted to be true professionals in the execution of their mandate.
Successive governments have not allowed our institutions and commercial organisations to flourish simply because their interests are personal, not national. It is a policy that has killed local initiative and undermined the efforts of the few who, against all odds, try to make a meaningful impact on the development landscape of the country.
What are described as square pegs have been put in round holes, with disastrous results. Instead of remedying these defects, we choose to turn attention to foreigners in whom we have so much confidence and who come here with little knowledge and return home with bags full of money.
It is a painful truth that if the US government had given the same amount to us or even doubled it and asked us to construct the same Tetteh Quarshie-Mallam Junction expressway, we would have found a thousand and one excuses for never completing it even after 10 years. That is our character — we want the good things of life but we do not want to do the right things to get the good things.
If we had been allowed to work on our own, first we would have been selective picking those who should execute the project, including the contractors and consultants, not for quality but political, tribal and monetary considerations. Even before the project started, people who professed to be our leaders would be struggling to dip their hands into the coffers to take a big chunk of the project money.
At the end of the day, there would be no project and no money, just the skeleton of an abandoned project, as we have them dotted all over the country. Some projects that were initiated more than 50 years ago have still not been completed, while we struggle to make a name by starting fresh ones that may not escape the fate of previous ones.
That brings us to the second lesson we need to learn. We have been told that out of the US$547 million given to Ghana under the MCA, only US$176 million was spent on the George Bush Motorway we are all celebrating. I believe if we were a serious people led by honest and dedicated men and women of foresight, we could have done many of such projects from our own resources over the years.
When we glance through the Auditor-General’s annual reports and listen to the revelations at the open sittings of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, we will realise how careless we have been in squandering our national resources which go to enrich a few in authority and their business collaborators.
Ghana, with its resources, should not, for a moment, seek external assistance to build roads, schools, hospitals and social infrastructure. If there was that vision among our leadership, we should have transformed not only Accra but all our major cities and towns by now.
Accra’s narrow roads and traffic-choked roundabouts would be a thing of the past if we had allowed our resources to remain in the coffers of the country and applied them judiciously according to our national needs.
The George Walker Bush Motorway is not only a thing of beauty; it is a gift that we must keep and maintain. Both drivers and pedestrians must exhibit discipline on how we use it. We pray that the squatters will not return so soon and turn the beautiful expressway into another jungle of containers, table-tops and refuse.
The most important lesson is that the new motorway is acting as the voice of the American people talking to us to learn to harness and make good use of our own God-given resources.
Now that we know the good things money can do, let us also protect our money and make good use of it.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Last Wednesday, February 15, 2012, the President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, led Ghanaians and other dignitaries to inaugurate the 14.1-kilometre Tetteh Quarshie Interchange-Mallam Junction expressway.
This project, which is the most visible among the compacts executed by the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) and funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) of the United States of America (USA), can be described as a gift from the government and the people of the US to the people of Ghana.
It was, therefore, not out of place when both the erstwhile Kufuor government and the current Mills administration came to an agreement to christen the highway the George Walker Bush Motorway, after the US President who gave a favourable response to Ghana’s application to access funds from the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA).
Ghana’s share of US$547 million was one of the single largest to be enjoyed by any Third World country and we need to salute all those who played diverse roles in carrying the Americans along with us in our supplications for such a huge amount of cash to support our infrastructure development.
The voice of Sheikh I.C. Quaye, the then Greater Accra Regional Minister and leading member of the Kufuor government could be heard ringing with excitement when it was announced that the US government had gratuitously granted our dear country the colossal amount of US$547 million as our share of the MCA.
“The money is big ooo!” he virtually screamed, and even went over the bar to declare that all the money given to Ghana since the time of Nkrumah could not add up to that MCA money.
Well, money is nothing until it is put to productive use. Those who have experienced the George Walker Bush Motorway, either driving or being driven on it, have described it as a whole new experience. Without anybody trying to do politics, we have cause to celebrate a project that has given Accra, our national capital, a face of modernity and we should aspire to move beyond this point and begin to look into the future for more of such magnificent projects.
As our initial excitement begins to wane, we must try picking some lessons from the successful execution of that project and all others executed under the supervision of MiDA.
First, we must admit and acknowledge the fact that apart from the funding and oversight supervision which came from the US, the projects were largely supervised at the local level by MiDA, a wholly Ghanaian body headed by Mr Martin Eson-Benjamin as the Chief Executive Officer.
The MiDA Board is chaired by Professor Samuel K. Sefa-Dedeh.
According to information available to this writer, there are 74 Ghanaians of various professional backgrounds and grades on the staff of MiDA. If, today, we are celebrating a good job done, credit must go to Ghanaian expertise and professionalism.
It means that if our professionals fail us elsewhere in this country, the issue will not be about qualification and competence but something else. It could be a problem of poor leadership and lack of direction, undue interference from higher authorities or lack of logistics or motivation.
Very often, politicians take the wrong decisions based on poor judgement, self-interest, cronyism, blind loyalty, nepotism, tribalism and moral corruption and then turn round to question the competence and ability of our professionals.
The failure of almost all our state enterprises, which paved the way for their sale to foreign interests, had nothing to do with the inability of the Ghanaian professional to measure up to his counterparts elsewhere. It had more to do with those who were at the helm of affairs who would not allow the right things to be done.
When we look back critically, Ghana Airways, Ghana Telecom and many others should not have gone the way they did if successive governments had not allowed personal and narrow interests to take the better part of them by employing the wrong people to positions of responsibility to dance to their tunes or cut off those who wanted to be true professionals in the execution of their mandate.
Successive governments have not allowed our institutions and commercial organisations to flourish simply because their interests are personal, not national. It is a policy that has killed local initiative and undermined the efforts of the few who, against all odds, try to make a meaningful impact on the development landscape of the country.
What are described as square pegs have been put in round holes, with disastrous results. Instead of remedying these defects, we choose to turn attention to foreigners in whom we have so much confidence and who come here with little knowledge and return home with bags full of money.
It is a painful truth that if the US government had given the same amount to us or even doubled it and asked us to construct the same Tetteh Quarshie-Mallam Junction expressway, we would have found a thousand and one excuses for never completing it even after 10 years. That is our character — we want the good things of life but we do not want to do the right things to get the good things.
If we had been allowed to work on our own, first we would have been selective picking those who should execute the project, including the contractors and consultants, not for quality but political, tribal and monetary considerations. Even before the project started, people who professed to be our leaders would be struggling to dip their hands into the coffers to take a big chunk of the project money.
At the end of the day, there would be no project and no money, just the skeleton of an abandoned project, as we have them dotted all over the country. Some projects that were initiated more than 50 years ago have still not been completed, while we struggle to make a name by starting fresh ones that may not escape the fate of previous ones.
That brings us to the second lesson we need to learn. We have been told that out of the US$547 million given to Ghana under the MCA, only US$176 million was spent on the George Bush Motorway we are all celebrating. I believe if we were a serious people led by honest and dedicated men and women of foresight, we could have done many of such projects from our own resources over the years.
When we glance through the Auditor-General’s annual reports and listen to the revelations at the open sittings of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, we will realise how careless we have been in squandering our national resources which go to enrich a few in authority and their business collaborators.
Ghana, with its resources, should not, for a moment, seek external assistance to build roads, schools, hospitals and social infrastructure. If there was that vision among our leadership, we should have transformed not only Accra but all our major cities and towns by now.
Accra’s narrow roads and traffic-choked roundabouts would be a thing of the past if we had allowed our resources to remain in the coffers of the country and applied them judiciously according to our national needs.
The George Walker Bush Motorway is not only a thing of beauty; it is a gift that we must keep and maintain. Both drivers and pedestrians must exhibit discipline on how we use it. We pray that the squatters will not return so soon and turn the beautiful expressway into another jungle of containers, table-tops and refuse.
The most important lesson is that the new motorway is acting as the voice of the American people talking to us to learn to harness and make good use of our own God-given resources.
Now that we know the good things money can do, let us also protect our money and make good use of it.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
A dream gone with the wind
By Kofi Akordor
BY now Goran Stevanovic, the Serbian coach who contributed to our national disgrace, is sitting somewhere in Europe, possibly his home country, taking a cool breeze while sipping vintage wine or taking tots of malt whiskey and pondering over where to go next.
His Ghanaian accomplices in the Football Association, led by President Kwesi Nyantakyi, are equally counting their gains while plotting where to go next to bring another white-skinned coach to come and do more damage to our football.
Plavi (as they call the coach) has nothing to worry about. He came to assemble players who have gone through the tutelage of local coaches from the colts era to the present and, without any new strategies or tactics, pushed them into battle. And for that he is given a good amount of cash which Ghanaian coaches can never dream about.
If we had won the cup, he would have taken all the glory. But now that we have lost, he can abandon us for his home country and blame everything on the players who, he says, did not take his instructions, while we lick our wounds in sober quietness. And why not? He could afford to relax somewhere musing over his fortune while we groan in anger for a lost opportunity.
Stevanovic is part of a long list of foreign coaches who, strangely, have been the darling of our football administrators but who, predictably, always leave us disappointed.
Why we are so obsessed with foreign coaches is an enigma because there are no facts on the ground to support that line of choice.
Ghana has won the Africa Cup four times and on all those occasions we conquered Africa with local coaches. The trail blazer was Charles Kumi (CK) Gyamfi who, as player/coach, led the Black Stars to win the cup in 1963.
In 1965, Ghana defended the cup under C.K. Gyamfi, who had then become a full-time coach. The Stars won the cup the third time in 1978 under Coach Osam Duodu. Our last conquest was in 1982, under good old C.K. Gyamfi.
Dear readers, if these are undisputable facts, where is that madness which makes the appointment of foreign coaches sacrosanct coming from? Some of these coaches cannot speak the English Language and come with their own interpreters, whereas our performance never justified their presence here.
Is it the old disease of inferiority complex that is haunting us? Or is it some intricate clauses embedded in the appointment clauses which enable some people to make personal fortunes at our national interest?
As recent as 2009, Coach Sellas Tetteh groomed some youngsters who took the world by storm and succeeded in winning the FIFA Under-20 World Cup to enter the history books as the first African team to attain that feat.
When the opportunity offered itself for us to pick a new coach for the national football team to replace Ratomir Dukovic, a Serbian, who abandoned us soon after the 2006 World Cup in Germany, the great men of the FA felt that if it would be a Ghanaian, then it better be another Serbian. So they opted for Milovan Rajevic.
Rajevic took us to the World Cup in South Africa and we all saw his contorted face when the Black Stars beat his Serbian national team. Some of us saw the danger there, but not those who are running the affairs of our national football.
So it came to pass that we had to search for another coach after Rajevic also deserted us for oil money in Saudi Arabia soon after South Africa 2010. Some of us raised our voices, insisting that it was time we lived up to our accolade as the Star of Africa and take the destiny of our country into own hands, if for nothing at all, at least in football.
Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah proved the point that it could be done as far back as 1963 and 1965. But the voices of nationalism, self-reliance and national pride were drowned by opportunism, inferiority complex and self-aggrandisement.
Not surprisingly, we went in for another Serbian who, by then, knew that there was cheap money to be made in a country called Ghana. That time he was in the person of Goran Stevanovic. Stevanovic would tell us he was going to Europe to monitor our foreign-based players and go and sleep somewhere.
Why should he bother to do any monitoring when the boys are already in Europe plying their trade? All he needed to do was invite them at the appropriate time, put them together for a few days and then push them into action, with very little input from him. He was not interested in the local league and never visited our league centres to monitor the performance of local players to pick those with potential for a possible inclusion in the senior national team.
If we succeed, it is good news for all. When we fail, we swallow our national pride, pick a few of the players and heap insults on them to assuage our pain and ease tension. Meanwhile, the foreign coach on whom we have invested a lot of funds goes away, only for another of his type to be employed.
Incidentally, these foreign coaches come here to meet already-groomed players — players who have been unearthed in their raw state and groomed into polished and refined players by local coaches to play in professional leagues in Europe and elsewhere.
Our players went to AFCON 2012 without any strategy but to exhibit individual talents. Our exit at the semi-finals is quite painful, to say the least, and no one should tell us that a foreign coach will make things better next time.
Cote d’Ivoire went to the same tournament with a local coach and a good game plan which yielded results, even though they were not the eventual winners.
Nobody is against foreign football coaches, just as nobody is against a foreign medical officer, a foreign engineer or a foreign teacher. What some of us are saying is that excessive reliance on everything foreign, including football coaches, is becoming a national obsession which is not helping us move on as a people. If a foreign coach is the last resort, let us go for one, and a very good one, not those who, at best, as Sepp Blatter observed, are not fit to handle third division clubs in their own countries.
Going for anything foreign means that as hard as we will try, we cannot find a local substitute. But where the foreign item is always the first choice, when the records obviously do not prove so, then we need to address that psychological deficiency with all the seriousness it deserves.
The argument that our local coaches do not possess certain qualifications or certificates does not hold. Are we looking for a good coach or a certificate holder? Have those with first-class certificates proved their mettle when they were given the job?
Another porous argument is that the players will not respect the local coaches. Who is saying that if you employ a local coach and pay him a good salary and give him the same authority as the foreign one, he cannot deliver? In any case, if we are not ready to respect ourselves, who will respect us?
Maybe we are just being consumed by our own inferiority complex which does not give us the self-confidence we need to take bold decisions but makes us feel inadequate and insecure doing things on our own.
Nkrumah’s dream of seeing the Ghanaian become his own master in all spheres of national life will remain a mirage if we cannot even teach ourselves how to play football.
Stevanovic will surely leave us, his personal mission satisfied. We are watching our football administrators what their next move will be.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogpsot.com
BY now Goran Stevanovic, the Serbian coach who contributed to our national disgrace, is sitting somewhere in Europe, possibly his home country, taking a cool breeze while sipping vintage wine or taking tots of malt whiskey and pondering over where to go next.
His Ghanaian accomplices in the Football Association, led by President Kwesi Nyantakyi, are equally counting their gains while plotting where to go next to bring another white-skinned coach to come and do more damage to our football.
Plavi (as they call the coach) has nothing to worry about. He came to assemble players who have gone through the tutelage of local coaches from the colts era to the present and, without any new strategies or tactics, pushed them into battle. And for that he is given a good amount of cash which Ghanaian coaches can never dream about.
If we had won the cup, he would have taken all the glory. But now that we have lost, he can abandon us for his home country and blame everything on the players who, he says, did not take his instructions, while we lick our wounds in sober quietness. And why not? He could afford to relax somewhere musing over his fortune while we groan in anger for a lost opportunity.
Stevanovic is part of a long list of foreign coaches who, strangely, have been the darling of our football administrators but who, predictably, always leave us disappointed.
Why we are so obsessed with foreign coaches is an enigma because there are no facts on the ground to support that line of choice.
Ghana has won the Africa Cup four times and on all those occasions we conquered Africa with local coaches. The trail blazer was Charles Kumi (CK) Gyamfi who, as player/coach, led the Black Stars to win the cup in 1963.
In 1965, Ghana defended the cup under C.K. Gyamfi, who had then become a full-time coach. The Stars won the cup the third time in 1978 under Coach Osam Duodu. Our last conquest was in 1982, under good old C.K. Gyamfi.
Dear readers, if these are undisputable facts, where is that madness which makes the appointment of foreign coaches sacrosanct coming from? Some of these coaches cannot speak the English Language and come with their own interpreters, whereas our performance never justified their presence here.
Is it the old disease of inferiority complex that is haunting us? Or is it some intricate clauses embedded in the appointment clauses which enable some people to make personal fortunes at our national interest?
As recent as 2009, Coach Sellas Tetteh groomed some youngsters who took the world by storm and succeeded in winning the FIFA Under-20 World Cup to enter the history books as the first African team to attain that feat.
When the opportunity offered itself for us to pick a new coach for the national football team to replace Ratomir Dukovic, a Serbian, who abandoned us soon after the 2006 World Cup in Germany, the great men of the FA felt that if it would be a Ghanaian, then it better be another Serbian. So they opted for Milovan Rajevic.
Rajevic took us to the World Cup in South Africa and we all saw his contorted face when the Black Stars beat his Serbian national team. Some of us saw the danger there, but not those who are running the affairs of our national football.
So it came to pass that we had to search for another coach after Rajevic also deserted us for oil money in Saudi Arabia soon after South Africa 2010. Some of us raised our voices, insisting that it was time we lived up to our accolade as the Star of Africa and take the destiny of our country into own hands, if for nothing at all, at least in football.
Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah proved the point that it could be done as far back as 1963 and 1965. But the voices of nationalism, self-reliance and national pride were drowned by opportunism, inferiority complex and self-aggrandisement.
Not surprisingly, we went in for another Serbian who, by then, knew that there was cheap money to be made in a country called Ghana. That time he was in the person of Goran Stevanovic. Stevanovic would tell us he was going to Europe to monitor our foreign-based players and go and sleep somewhere.
Why should he bother to do any monitoring when the boys are already in Europe plying their trade? All he needed to do was invite them at the appropriate time, put them together for a few days and then push them into action, with very little input from him. He was not interested in the local league and never visited our league centres to monitor the performance of local players to pick those with potential for a possible inclusion in the senior national team.
If we succeed, it is good news for all. When we fail, we swallow our national pride, pick a few of the players and heap insults on them to assuage our pain and ease tension. Meanwhile, the foreign coach on whom we have invested a lot of funds goes away, only for another of his type to be employed.
Incidentally, these foreign coaches come here to meet already-groomed players — players who have been unearthed in their raw state and groomed into polished and refined players by local coaches to play in professional leagues in Europe and elsewhere.
Our players went to AFCON 2012 without any strategy but to exhibit individual talents. Our exit at the semi-finals is quite painful, to say the least, and no one should tell us that a foreign coach will make things better next time.
Cote d’Ivoire went to the same tournament with a local coach and a good game plan which yielded results, even though they were not the eventual winners.
Nobody is against foreign football coaches, just as nobody is against a foreign medical officer, a foreign engineer or a foreign teacher. What some of us are saying is that excessive reliance on everything foreign, including football coaches, is becoming a national obsession which is not helping us move on as a people. If a foreign coach is the last resort, let us go for one, and a very good one, not those who, at best, as Sepp Blatter observed, are not fit to handle third division clubs in their own countries.
Going for anything foreign means that as hard as we will try, we cannot find a local substitute. But where the foreign item is always the first choice, when the records obviously do not prove so, then we need to address that psychological deficiency with all the seriousness it deserves.
The argument that our local coaches do not possess certain qualifications or certificates does not hold. Are we looking for a good coach or a certificate holder? Have those with first-class certificates proved their mettle when they were given the job?
Another porous argument is that the players will not respect the local coaches. Who is saying that if you employ a local coach and pay him a good salary and give him the same authority as the foreign one, he cannot deliver? In any case, if we are not ready to respect ourselves, who will respect us?
Maybe we are just being consumed by our own inferiority complex which does not give us the self-confidence we need to take bold decisions but makes us feel inadequate and insecure doing things on our own.
Nkrumah’s dream of seeing the Ghanaian become his own master in all spheres of national life will remain a mirage if we cannot even teach ourselves how to play football.
Stevanovic will surely leave us, his personal mission satisfied. We are watching our football administrators what their next move will be.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogpsot.com
Thursday, February 9, 2012
The Nkrumah vision lives on
By Kofi Akordor
“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”- Steve Biko
Putting the usual speeches aside, the 18th Ordinary Session of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) will be remembered for two main things. First, there was the relocation of the secretariat of the continental body to its new and magnificent headquarters, which we have been told is a gift from China, the emerging economic superpower on the continent.
We may be excited about the new edifice, which cost Chinese taxpayers US$300 million, but to some of us, this is a gift that will come with strings attached. Remember — he who pays the piper calls the tune. We should, therefore, not be surprised if, sooner than later, China begins to call the shots as to which of our abundant resources should go where and at what price. Like the US and the European powers, China will soon determine how Africa should vote on major issues at the UN or elsewhere.
But what will be of greater interest to many Africans on the mother continent and in the Diaspora was the unveiling of a giant bronze statue of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of the Republic of Ghana and founder member of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the AU.
That historic and memorable event was carried out by the President, Prof John Evans Atta Mills, and witnessed by many dignitaries, including Prof Francis Nkrumah, Dr Nkrumah’s first son, and Ms Samia Yaaba Nkrumah, Dr Nkrumah’s daughter who was barely a baby when her father’s government was toppled by the Central Intelligence Agency-inspired coup.
In addition to this is the institution of the Kwame Nkrumah Scientific Awards which were conferred on two prominent scientists for promoting research work in the sciences on the continent.
The first recipients are Professor Oluwale Daniel Makinde of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, who received the Basic Sciences, Technology and Innovation Award, and Prof Marike Labuschagne of the Bloemfontein University, who received the Life and Earth Science Award.
That was not the first time the AU was bestowing honour on Dr Nkrumah, the undisputable lead architect of Africa’s emancipation from colonialism and neo-colonialism, having dedicated to him the AU Day, which is celebrated every May 25 to commemorate the birth of the OAU, now the AU.
However, coming at a time when the AU is going through recognition crisis and struggling to establish its relevance on the international stage, the honour done Nkrumah can only be interpreted as an attempt by the continental leaders to invoke the spirit of Nkrumah, whose vision of seeing Africa a free and prosperous continent fully prepared to assert itself in the comity of nations remains a challenge.
Nkrumah, as a person, had his weaknesses and frailties, and as a politicians he had his detractors. But, by and large, Nkrumah stood tall among his peers and today, many decades after his death, it is becoming increasingly difficult to forget him.
He stood firmly and religiously for the total emancipation of the African continent from all vestiges of colonialism and its more cunning and sinister brother, neo-colonialism. He was also determined to purge the Black race of all forms inferiority complex and restore in Black people their psychological balance which had been devastated by slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism.
On the home front, Nkrumah did not spend time lamenting over inadequate resources or mourning the side effects of colonialism and all the things African leaders use as excuses for their inaction. He hit the ground running, not recklessly, aimlessly or trying to cling on to anything floating. Nkrumah was purposeful in all his endeavours and on all fronts. He pursued a vigorous educational policy which astounded many and was the envy of many other countries on the continent and beyond. He foresaw that the country would require a high calibre of professionals in all spheres of national development and pursued his policy in that direction.
Basic education was free and compulsory; no two ways about that. Secondary education was made accessible to as many people as possible. Beyond secondary education, there were many teacher training colleges, technical and vocational institutes to suit the academic and intellectual capabilities of everybody.
At the tertiary level, Nkrumah was not only targeting bureaucrats to man the administrative class of the Civil Service. The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology had, as its prime objective, the training of scientists and technologists to serve as the bulwark of the country’s industrial and manufacturing sectors.
There was no doubt that Ghana would have been a nuclear power by now had the initiative Nkrumah took in the early 1960s with the institution of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission not been terminated with the collapse of his administration.
The University of Cape Coast was purposely established to train graduate teachers for the numerous secondary schools that were springing up in the country.
His aggressive agricultural policies made it possible for agricultural scientists from Malaysia to come here and take away oil palm seedlings to their country. Today, Malaysia is one of the most powerful industrial and economic powers in south-east Asia whose wealth revolves around palm oil and cocoa, of which Ghana is a prime producer. Ghana’s fortunes, on the other hand, have dwindled to the extent that it has become a net importer of anything conceivable, from tooth picks to wheelbarrows.
Ghana’s industrial landscape was quite phenomenal in the Nkrumah era. One can hardly say the same today and the country, like most others on the continent, has become raw material producers.
On the social and infrastructural front, Nkrumah was determined to make Ghana an example of what a determined and proud people could do if galvanised into action and if they make judicious use of their resources. The Tema Port, the Volta River Project, which includes the hydro-electric dam and the Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO), the Accra-Tema Motorway and the factories that blossomed on the industrial landscape are ample evidence of the man’s vision and mission.
Some of his contemporaries claimed Nkrumah was galloping rather too fast. Maybe it was for a purpose. Nkrumah did not live long to see some his ideas come into fruition. But every true Ghanaian will admit that Ghana, even in the present day, is surviving mostly on the legacies of the Nkrumah era.
Nkrumah knew that Ghana was not going to enjoy its political independence if it was going to share borders with others still in colonial bondage. He, therefore, carried the battle of emancipation beyond Ghana’s borders.
He did not pursue only political freedom but also economic integration to steer the continent clear from its colonial roots. The greatest irony of our times is that Africa, one of the most endowed continents on earth, remains the poorest in terms of development.
Africa is now synonymous with poverty and hunger, illiteracy and ignorance and all the known killer diseases, including malaria, HIV/AIDS, TB and Buruli ulcer. Presiding over these developmental challenges on the continent are some of the most vicious and corrupt leaders the world has ever produced.
What could be described as Nkrumah’s greatest contribution to the emancipation of the Black race was his surge against mental slavery which had stripped Blacks of their self-esteem, self-worth, self-confidence and self-acceptance. If, today, African leaders continue to junket the world looking for external assistance for everything in the midst of abundance, it is because they do not value personal and national pride.
Robert Nesta Marley, arguably one of the greatest philosophers of our time, delivered his message through music: “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our weak mind.”
Mental slavery and its associated inferiority complex continue to cause havoc to the psyche of the African, reducing him to a second-rate citizen, even on his own land.
If in 2012 African leaders chose,“Boosting Intra-African Trade”, for its 18th Ordinary Session of the Summit of Heads of State and Government, it tells a story of how far they are from attaining the goals of continental unity which their predecessors, led by Nkrumah, fought for many decades ago.
Trade among African countries is very scanty, approximated to be between 10 and 12 per cent. That does not augur well for a continent that commands averagely about a third of the world’s natural resources. So while we ship our materials raw to other continents, we turn round to import finished products which came out of our raw materials at high prices. What that means is that all our efforts go to enrich producers on other continents.
Africa is highly marginalised, not because it is under-resourced but because it has a leadership that is very corrupt, myopic, selfish, unimaginative, yet always willing to go begging when everything needed for development is right here.
In 2000, Nkrumah was voted Africa’s Man of the Millennium by listeners to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service. This is a tribute to a man whose ideals and vision are beginning to make a serious impact on the minds of many Africans.
While the numerous awards and monuments erected in memory of Nkrumah in various parts of the world are inspiring and serve as a reminder of a mission unaccomplished, Africa needs a leadership that will be imbued with Nkrumah’s zeal and vision both at the national and continental levels.
What Africa is missing today is a person who will take up the mantle of Nkrumah and pursue his vision of a free and united Africa that will not play subservience to any power nor pander to the whims and caprices of neo-colonial interests. That is the vision which lives on.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”- Steve Biko
Putting the usual speeches aside, the 18th Ordinary Session of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) will be remembered for two main things. First, there was the relocation of the secretariat of the continental body to its new and magnificent headquarters, which we have been told is a gift from China, the emerging economic superpower on the continent.
We may be excited about the new edifice, which cost Chinese taxpayers US$300 million, but to some of us, this is a gift that will come with strings attached. Remember — he who pays the piper calls the tune. We should, therefore, not be surprised if, sooner than later, China begins to call the shots as to which of our abundant resources should go where and at what price. Like the US and the European powers, China will soon determine how Africa should vote on major issues at the UN or elsewhere.
But what will be of greater interest to many Africans on the mother continent and in the Diaspora was the unveiling of a giant bronze statue of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of the Republic of Ghana and founder member of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the AU.
That historic and memorable event was carried out by the President, Prof John Evans Atta Mills, and witnessed by many dignitaries, including Prof Francis Nkrumah, Dr Nkrumah’s first son, and Ms Samia Yaaba Nkrumah, Dr Nkrumah’s daughter who was barely a baby when her father’s government was toppled by the Central Intelligence Agency-inspired coup.
In addition to this is the institution of the Kwame Nkrumah Scientific Awards which were conferred on two prominent scientists for promoting research work in the sciences on the continent.
The first recipients are Professor Oluwale Daniel Makinde of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, who received the Basic Sciences, Technology and Innovation Award, and Prof Marike Labuschagne of the Bloemfontein University, who received the Life and Earth Science Award.
That was not the first time the AU was bestowing honour on Dr Nkrumah, the undisputable lead architect of Africa’s emancipation from colonialism and neo-colonialism, having dedicated to him the AU Day, which is celebrated every May 25 to commemorate the birth of the OAU, now the AU.
However, coming at a time when the AU is going through recognition crisis and struggling to establish its relevance on the international stage, the honour done Nkrumah can only be interpreted as an attempt by the continental leaders to invoke the spirit of Nkrumah, whose vision of seeing Africa a free and prosperous continent fully prepared to assert itself in the comity of nations remains a challenge.
Nkrumah, as a person, had his weaknesses and frailties, and as a politicians he had his detractors. But, by and large, Nkrumah stood tall among his peers and today, many decades after his death, it is becoming increasingly difficult to forget him.
He stood firmly and religiously for the total emancipation of the African continent from all vestiges of colonialism and its more cunning and sinister brother, neo-colonialism. He was also determined to purge the Black race of all forms inferiority complex and restore in Black people their psychological balance which had been devastated by slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism.
On the home front, Nkrumah did not spend time lamenting over inadequate resources or mourning the side effects of colonialism and all the things African leaders use as excuses for their inaction. He hit the ground running, not recklessly, aimlessly or trying to cling on to anything floating. Nkrumah was purposeful in all his endeavours and on all fronts. He pursued a vigorous educational policy which astounded many and was the envy of many other countries on the continent and beyond. He foresaw that the country would require a high calibre of professionals in all spheres of national development and pursued his policy in that direction.
Basic education was free and compulsory; no two ways about that. Secondary education was made accessible to as many people as possible. Beyond secondary education, there were many teacher training colleges, technical and vocational institutes to suit the academic and intellectual capabilities of everybody.
At the tertiary level, Nkrumah was not only targeting bureaucrats to man the administrative class of the Civil Service. The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology had, as its prime objective, the training of scientists and technologists to serve as the bulwark of the country’s industrial and manufacturing sectors.
There was no doubt that Ghana would have been a nuclear power by now had the initiative Nkrumah took in the early 1960s with the institution of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission not been terminated with the collapse of his administration.
The University of Cape Coast was purposely established to train graduate teachers for the numerous secondary schools that were springing up in the country.
His aggressive agricultural policies made it possible for agricultural scientists from Malaysia to come here and take away oil palm seedlings to their country. Today, Malaysia is one of the most powerful industrial and economic powers in south-east Asia whose wealth revolves around palm oil and cocoa, of which Ghana is a prime producer. Ghana’s fortunes, on the other hand, have dwindled to the extent that it has become a net importer of anything conceivable, from tooth picks to wheelbarrows.
Ghana’s industrial landscape was quite phenomenal in the Nkrumah era. One can hardly say the same today and the country, like most others on the continent, has become raw material producers.
On the social and infrastructural front, Nkrumah was determined to make Ghana an example of what a determined and proud people could do if galvanised into action and if they make judicious use of their resources. The Tema Port, the Volta River Project, which includes the hydro-electric dam and the Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO), the Accra-Tema Motorway and the factories that blossomed on the industrial landscape are ample evidence of the man’s vision and mission.
Some of his contemporaries claimed Nkrumah was galloping rather too fast. Maybe it was for a purpose. Nkrumah did not live long to see some his ideas come into fruition. But every true Ghanaian will admit that Ghana, even in the present day, is surviving mostly on the legacies of the Nkrumah era.
Nkrumah knew that Ghana was not going to enjoy its political independence if it was going to share borders with others still in colonial bondage. He, therefore, carried the battle of emancipation beyond Ghana’s borders.
He did not pursue only political freedom but also economic integration to steer the continent clear from its colonial roots. The greatest irony of our times is that Africa, one of the most endowed continents on earth, remains the poorest in terms of development.
Africa is now synonymous with poverty and hunger, illiteracy and ignorance and all the known killer diseases, including malaria, HIV/AIDS, TB and Buruli ulcer. Presiding over these developmental challenges on the continent are some of the most vicious and corrupt leaders the world has ever produced.
What could be described as Nkrumah’s greatest contribution to the emancipation of the Black race was his surge against mental slavery which had stripped Blacks of their self-esteem, self-worth, self-confidence and self-acceptance. If, today, African leaders continue to junket the world looking for external assistance for everything in the midst of abundance, it is because they do not value personal and national pride.
Robert Nesta Marley, arguably one of the greatest philosophers of our time, delivered his message through music: “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our weak mind.”
Mental slavery and its associated inferiority complex continue to cause havoc to the psyche of the African, reducing him to a second-rate citizen, even on his own land.
If in 2012 African leaders chose,“Boosting Intra-African Trade”, for its 18th Ordinary Session of the Summit of Heads of State and Government, it tells a story of how far they are from attaining the goals of continental unity which their predecessors, led by Nkrumah, fought for many decades ago.
Trade among African countries is very scanty, approximated to be between 10 and 12 per cent. That does not augur well for a continent that commands averagely about a third of the world’s natural resources. So while we ship our materials raw to other continents, we turn round to import finished products which came out of our raw materials at high prices. What that means is that all our efforts go to enrich producers on other continents.
Africa is highly marginalised, not because it is under-resourced but because it has a leadership that is very corrupt, myopic, selfish, unimaginative, yet always willing to go begging when everything needed for development is right here.
In 2000, Nkrumah was voted Africa’s Man of the Millennium by listeners to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service. This is a tribute to a man whose ideals and vision are beginning to make a serious impact on the minds of many Africans.
While the numerous awards and monuments erected in memory of Nkrumah in various parts of the world are inspiring and serve as a reminder of a mission unaccomplished, Africa needs a leadership that will be imbued with Nkrumah’s zeal and vision both at the national and continental levels.
What Africa is missing today is a person who will take up the mantle of Nkrumah and pursue his vision of a free and united Africa that will not play subservience to any power nor pander to the whims and caprices of neo-colonial interests. That is the vision which lives on.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
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