OVER the weekend the celebrated man of God did not mince words when celebrating his church’s 30th anniversary in Accra he said: “Instead of pushing out of our cocoons by ourselves, we beg for others to come and help us. In the process we have become a crippled people. Look around us and see how we have crippled ourselves like that butterfly. Our farms are crippled. Our rivers are crippled. Our environment is crippled. Our industries are crippled. Our schools are crippled. Our local talents are crippled. Yet we look for some help from outside.”
THIS week, our country-Ghana will be 57 years old after obtaining independence from our colonial master, the British. The essence of our independence was to manage our own affairs and run our governance and economy to the betterment of the whole nation.
BUT 57 years down the lane the country is still crawling and always begging for alms in spite of the numerous natural resources we are endowed with which should have by now made us one of the economic giants in Africa if not the world.
WHAT saddens us is our total dependency on foreign assistance. It is a “BIG” shame that our national budget is yearly supported with about 50% donor funds before as a country we can execute all our national programmes and projects.
OUR woes are as a result of bad governance and poor economic policies which over the years the country has suffered in the hands of successive governments. Our leaders need to sit up and think through the economic policies that they roll out to bring relief to the citizenry.
IT is important we all join hands in the fight against foreign dependency which is killing our spirit of nationalism and thereby reducing our sovereign status in the eyes of the developed world. The country cannot continue to rely on foreign support for all its national projects while there is abundance of wealth here.
WHAT our leaders need to do is to think about the country first by judiciously making use of the resources in the country to better the lives of the people. If the leaders can avoid the temptation of amassing wealth at the expense of the poor tax payer Ghana will be a better place for all of us.
THE citizens must also contribute their quota by paying their taxes and giving out their best in terms of work output to help economic growth which by so doing we will all get to our economic destination and eventually break the cycles of limitations we are encased in and completely reject dependency.