Our indece must be more meaningful

The late President Nkrumah did not mince words about his own excitement about nationhood when he declared, among other issues, that the “Black man is capable of managing his own affairs”.

Our first President demonstrated to the world that Ghana had arrived on the world stage where he himself demonstrated the capability and competence of the African personality.

Soon, most of African countries were on the path of reconstruction with the training of a large corps of skilled manpower to lead the nationalisation of their economies to suit the needs and aspirations of the people.

On hindsight, it appears our founding fathers took many things for granted and did not anticipate the might of neo-colonialist forces who had to regroup with local collaborators to reverse the clock of progress.

The military interruption of 1966 and subsequent coups d’etat have set the wheel of progress backwards. After 1966, for instance, many of the projects initiated under the First Republic were abandoned and some still dot our skylines today.

We are paying dearly for those mistakes now but those failures should serve as a guide for our plans to rebuild our country.

Almost six decades after independence, Ghana should have been in a position to provide the basic needs of its people. Unfortunately, we are still groping in the dark, trying hard to find antidotes to basic challenges such as providing food and shelter for our people, as well as regular water and power for domestic and industrial use.

The military interventions reversed the clock of progress but the civilian regimes also encouraged rent seeking to such an extent that most public appointments were made based on party affiliations, instead of merit.

To succeed in our collective effort to build a new Ghana, all Ghanaians must break away from the status quo.

It is against this backdrop that the Daily Graphic thinks we should all buy into the appeal by President John Dramani Mahama to all Ghanaians to embrace the wind of change that is intended to make the nation a better place for all.

Our country is endowed with abundant human and natural resources and it is needless that we are going through economic challenges years after independence.

It is about time our leaders harnessed the resources to provide the kind of development that will ease the pain of everyday struggle on the people.

The Daily Graphic again appeals to the President to put in place policies and programmes that will motivate all Ghanaians to contribute to nation building.

The present situation where the country appears polarised along partisan lines is not good enough, as it encourages those who are not part of the governance structure to sit on the fence.

So long as we have decided on the path of multi-party governance, there will be political parties with members. This means that there will be diversity in our society, but we need to leverage the strength in our diversity for progress.

The Daily Graphic urges all Ghanaians to use the occasion of our 56th independence milestone to build bridges of unity for national development.