Still marching at 55

By Kofi Akordor
IT is a ritual we all went through just like those before us and our children and those after them would continue it. We all marched to celebrate our country’s political independence from Great Britain, some barefooted and on an empty stomach.
So it came to pass that last Tuesday, March 6, 2012, as tradition demands, our children and junior brothers and sisters had to march to mark the 55th anniversary of our independence.
It seems this time people are getting fed up and are questioning the wisdom putting our children in the sun for long hours for this annual ritual of celebrating independence day.
The health implications of this exercise is quite obvious. This year recorded the tragic case of 14-year-old Goni Etornam of the Ho Fiave Seventh-Day Adventist Junior High School who collapsed and died while rehearsing for the anniversary parade.
On the parade day itself, there were photographs of some of the children who had collapsed and were receiving first aid, apparently from dehydration and fatigue. There was no doubt that the exercise was exerting a lot of pressure on the children who had to abandon some classes for weeks for rehearsals until the D-day.
Parents are beginning to question the essence of this exercise, especially in major cities like Accra, where the safety of the children can sometimes come under question. The subject was forcefully driven home by Dr Paa Kwasi Nduom, Founder and Leader of the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP), who felt there should be a better way of celebrating independence and not this archaic annual march pasts.
People may have their varied opinions, which is their democratic right. Aside the health and safety concerns, some of us suspect that the argument against the march past is strengthened more out of disillusionment. Many Ghanaians are now wondering whether indeed independence had brought the real freedom we claimed we gained on March 6, 1957 or just a freedom to sing an anthem and hoist a flag.
When we take a critical look at ourselves and then take a look at our contemporaries who were yesterday in the same trench with us, there is that feeling of failure, a huge void that many think should have been filled long ago. We are tired of mentioning the Malaysian example, but we need to be repeating it, if that would remind us that we have a long way to go.
That is why the celebration is no longer holding any attraction to many people who just go through the mechanical motion of seeing the day off. Look at the latest celebration. There were no flags proudly adorning our skies as was the case previously.
This year’s case was made worse after abysmal performance of the Black Stars, the senior national team in the African Cup of Nations jointly hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. “What is there to celebrate?” many are asking.
Things that we should have done many years ago have become the proud achievements of today. Even though the present government has made it a major policy to house our children in a more decent classrooms, there are still a large number of them who have the sky as the roof over their heads.
Our national capital, Accra, does not conjure the images of the administrative nerve centre of a country so much endowed with almost everything on the ground and under the bowels of the earth.
Ghana is about one of the few countries that can undertake a fully integrated aluminum industry without looking for any of the essential materials from outside. But we are still exporting raw bauxite at cheap price. The larger percentage of our cocoa is exported as raw beans, thus reducing the value of the cocoa.
The railway system we inherited from the colonial masters could not be maintained, let alone improved. The carnage on our roads has partly to do with the pressure on road transport whereby long distances have to be covered on vehicles plying not too good roads. Can we imagine the pleasure of travelling if there were rail lines linking Accra to the north?
Why should we continue to have only one refinery after 55 years? Why should the Kpong Intake Point continue to be the sole source of water supply to Tema and most parts of Accra when below the Kpong Dam, the water is a waste?
Our agriculture is still like the medieval times. So while the waters of the River Volta, another great gift from God, flow through vast arable lands and drains wastefully into the Atlantic, we, as nation, still have to rely on food imports from countries that could not count on a fraction of our resources.
Take every sector of our national life – agriculture, education, health, industry, housing, energy – and we need a strong convincing that we are doing better today than we did 30 or 40 years ago. We are tightly tied to the apron strings of the donor community, thus diminishing any semblance of independence.
To some extent, we may blame political instability and dictatorship, no matter the guise, for part of the problem. However, no matter how we look at it, leadership has been a major problem. A leadership that would carry the nation along its development path is missing somehow. That is why many Ghanaians, including those who were his avowed political opponents, are having nostalgic memories of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s first President, the man whose selflessness. dedication and ambition continues to sustain this country and nurture hope for a better future.
We had a new hope when we went multiparty, a product of the 1992 Constitution. But the winner-takes-all doctrine has turned the political landscape into a huge minefield threatening our national existence. The country is polarised on partisan lines so much so that our leaders could not tell what is national or sectarian interest.
It seems if you take away religion, politics is the only sure way of making it big without much sweat, so people have become very aggressive towards their political opponents and the evidence is available on the airwaves and in the newspapers.
We do not have a common ground where, as a people, we can congregate and tackle development challenges with one voice and oneness of purpose. This is an election year and we are praying that this country remains united after December 7, 2012.
These and other considerations are making our compatriots skeptical about the fruits of independence and would, therefore, want their children to be left alone and not to be drawn into a celebration which does not have any meaning for them.

fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordorblogspot.com