Ghana doesn’t have a national dream – Dei-Tumi


Renowned Ghanaian Motivational Speaker Emmanuel Dei-Tumi says Ghana does not have a national dream driving citizens to a specific and common destination.

He said the country has for decades been ran on political party manifestos, which keeps changing with every party that comes to power.

Dei-Tumi was speaking about whether there is a Ghana Dream similar to the proverbial American Dream, and those of other nations.

He noted that the proverbial American Dream is so strong that even a cleaner at a Space Station knew his job as a cleaner was part of efforts to send humans to space and explore possibilities there.

Besides America, other countries, which developed fast usually had a national dream that drove that development.

In recent history, countries described as the Asian tigers, such as Singapore, Malaysia, China, Japan and others also showed signs of a clear dream which propelled them to economic development.

Currently, in Ghana, the ruling party is pursuing a manifesto with a title “Better Ghana Agenda”. But the Motivational Speaker said “that is not a dream – it is a project or a goal which should have been a product of a common national dream but we do not have one.”

“You would notice that if another political party comes to power, they will come with a different agenda which may not fall in line with the one this government is pursuing, and drive the country in a different direction because there is no common guiding national vision,” he said.

Dei-Tumi said the National Development Planning Commission was set up with a noble idea to galvanize all the ideas from the whole country and come out with a common vision for all to pursue. But the Commission itself is subjected to the whims and caprices of politicians, who decide who occupies the Commission and the programmes they draw.

He noted that because there is no national dream, individual Ghanaians have not imbibed the ideals of patriotism deeply enough to be able to profess those ideals without aid.

An example of that failure, he said, was when the youth who attended Tuesday’s launch of the new National Youth Development Program  by President John Mahama, sang the popular song “Arise Ghana youth for your country” from a song sheet instead of from memory.

“It tells you that we have not imbibed any dream that drives us in our everyday activity as a people to feed into a national dream for our common good,” he said.

Dei-Tumi’s sentiments are not far from a similar one by Dr. Mensa Anamua Otabil, who once said “nothing in Ghana right now drives the juices in us as a people seeking to achieve something for ourselves.”

Meanwhile, political party leaders from Progressive People’s Party (PPP) and People’s National Convention (PNC) agreed with Dei-Tumi that Ghana has no national dream.

However, National Youth Organiser of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Sammy Awuku thinks there is a national dream, which he defined as the individual Ghanaian seeking to provide for his family what he could not achieve for himself; something which Dei-Tumi described as a goal and not a national dream.

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