Ghana Election 2024: Before you vote

I have carefully disagreed and agreed with myself after conscious deliberation of the issues and what is actually amiss and further engaged in our daily debates about the problems of our dear Ghana and it all points to leadership and the Ghanaian mindset.

Anyone who has followed politics and the politicians in Africa and Ghana will agree with me that this 2024 general election should not be between the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC). It should be about Ghana and the future.

Before we vote, we need to understand and consider why we vote and what we are going in for. Africans have refused to vote based on their common interest; the African continent has had little in terms of development.

Most African countries are underdeveloped after independence to the extent that poverty is one common thing among members. Africa has had bad leaders and it’s obvious in times of accountability.

Most African leaders have had the notoriety for bad governance, terrorism, corruption, misgovernance, lawlessness and many more.

Ghana has not been spared any of these, remaining dependent even after independence, importing everything and borrowing more than we spend.

Suffered

Dear Ghanaians, we have suffered enough from misgovernance, corruption, nepotism, greed, bad roads, cheap policies and wanton disrespect from our leaders. We, after independence, have walked through the trenches of bad leadership to the extent that our problems have quadrennially remained cyclical and the same.

It is an incomprehensible fact that after independence in 1957, 67 years after, we import virtually everything including frozen chicken, toothpicks and even tomatoes and maize.

After 67 years, we are still battling how to combat cholera and malaria. After independence, Ghana is still struggling to have good roads.

We simply have not been able to maintain the roads left behind by our forefathers; we cannot keep the love and integrity this country was laid on and almost everything we touch is either to win favour in the sight of people or for reelection.

We have remained politically bigots and selfish in many sectors. Our sense of purpose and responsibility is eroded and visibly missing.

Hopeful

Despite this fact, we have watched and remained hopeful that someday, a man or a woman will come; yet we keep thinking and voting in a way that has pillaged us. Thereby, making us lack many monumental developments in all aspects.

Stealthily, our actions have also caused us to lose the human resources this country needs at a time like this when we are to wake up and begin pondering about what is happening to us.

We rather lose these (human) resources to other countries due to hardships faced in Ghana.

Today, men and women have entered our forests with pans, shovels, pick axes, chainsaws, excavators and are busily carving our land in search of gold. It is now everywhere that Chinese nationals are given permits by chiefs and political party stalwarts to mine in our rivers and streams to the detriment of our lives.

I don’t understand what has happened to Ghana. The Ghana we grew to see from the 90s is not what we have here. We are destroying her.

I know things will turn around and we can do it and do it better by asking the relevant questions and holding our leaders accountable.

We need to enter the ballot box and imagine Ghana in the future and make a decision that will propel us to that growth. We all need to consciously accept our mistakes and forge ahead devoid of our usual parochial interests as far as partisan politics is concerned.

We need to vote for a leader who can take this country to the future we will look back and say; “we did it.” We need to make Ghana a better home for the future of our future.

The writer is a tutor.