Political science lecturer at KNUST, Dr. Richard Amoako-Baah has argued that Ghana’s independence appears meaningless because successive leaders preoccupy themselves with building monuments instead of passing on knowledge to the next generation.
Due to that wrong mindset, much was not done to improve the country’s educational system rendering it “unpractical and almost useless”.
Speaking for the motion, “Ghana’s independence has lost its meaning” at the second Joy FM Debate in Accra today, Dr. Amoako Baah said Ghana has not developed like its peers after independence because its first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah ran a one-man show as he failed to mentor people who could take over from him in his absence.
A Pathologist and former Director of Ghana Health Service, Prof. Agyemang Badu Akosah spoke against the motion.
In his conclusion remarks, Dr. Amoako-Baah challenged Ghanaian leaders to think into the future and provide the necessary tools that the younger generation would need to build on and better whatever they have left
“You go to America and ask Americans who is the best president the country has ever had, no doubt Abraham Lincoln; what did he build? Nothing! The greatest assets that a leader can bequeath to a country is not monuments, it is thinking properly. Because if you teach the young to think properly, they can build far greater monuments that you can ever build.”
Dr. Amoako-Baah also called for a new way of doing things in the country if the nation wants to develop.
For instance, instead of competing with Ivory Coast, Ghana’s western neighbour, whose resources are almost the same as Ghana’s, can join forces as the world’s largest and second largest cocoa producers (Ivory Coast and Ghana respectively), to sell their produce to a cartel and put value on the produce.
So far as such things are concerned, no western country would come and make any suggestion of that sort when it would not be to their advantage, he opined. But a well-educated society would be able to think through in that direction, he said.
“It comes down to the kind of education we have received, unpractical, almost useless, we are able to repeat things, recite things, we appear to be educated and still helpless, that is the problem. We can sing God’s praise from here to eternity, he gave us brains to think with, this is what others have done and has put them forward, we refused to do it and instead we want to speak tongues all day long, it won’t work. You can speak all the tongues you want because you are a thief it won’t work.”
Prof. Agyemang Badu Akosah underscored that Ghana’s woes started after Nkrumah’s overthrow. He said Nkrumah put the nation on top gear and was fast tracking its development but for some elites who he said engaged in “incriminate participation” against his government.
He noted however that all is not lost, and called on Ghanaians to eschew selfishness because with a concerted effort, Ghana can accelerate its development.
