Who really cares about the children (future leaders) and youth in Ghana? Kofi Annan mentioned the youth in the country should be allowed to lead; how well has the country equipped them to lead?  How has education been made comfortable and easy for the youth to become leaders?

There are two major ways to keep a society down: keep the majority poor and keep their children away from getting educated. The system knows that democracy and the freedom that comes with it is too risky to be left in the hands of people with knowledge, so the powers-that-be have ensured Ghanaians are as far from acquiring knowledge as they are from attaining prosperity. It is a double-edged sword of destruction.

Educated people ask too much questions and they are likely to be able to earn more. These are two combinations that make voting for anyone because of a pack of noodles and Ghc 20 very difficult. Educated people, even if poor are smart enough to know that voting for anyone because of petty gifts are momentary decisions that could have generational impacts.

Why then should a government have education at heart if it will empower people to ask questions? Keep them in poverty and entice them with gifts to always keep them on your side.  They just want the status quo to remain. Share the national cake ‘up’ and throw the crumbs down – let the rich be up and the poor be down; no middleclass.

Poverty is making people do the unthinkable…

According to recent reports, Ghanaian boys who are not even gays are listing themselves on gay expat sites seeking for men and these minors are seriously practicing prostitution for as low as 50 Gh pesewas. I don’t think a child from a well-to-do family will be on the street for that amount of money.

A prostitute from a comfortable home will practice her trade around big men for big cash. Prostitution is not my problem because it is not only women hawking their services on the street that are prostitutes. My worry is the very young children involved because they’ve dropped out of school or the means of getting quality education is not there.

The Minister for Gender and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur when informed of the situation expressed dismay at the issue of child prostitution and promised to liaise with rights groups and stakeholders to tackle the issue. On how she was going to deal with the issue, she said although her ministry had a funding problem, she was confident education could be key in reducing the incidence of underage prostitution.

“In fact, there isn’t any funding to address the issue of child prostitution, what we can only do is to continue with awareness creation with our development partners.”

I thought promises were given before elections and actions taken after elections, so why should a minister be promising and also talking about funds not being there for a whole Gender and Social Protection ministry? I don’t really know what is shocking her, the child prostitute or the amount of money involved? The powers that be claim the country is not broke so from her response, one can deduce that the woman has no clue as to what is going on or what to do.

Looking at the situation from the other way, it is high time Ghanaians have the number of children they can comfortably cater for. Days of having kids for future investments are long gone. No child asked to be born; they therefore should not come and suffer.

Having 6 children with 5 working as house helps in people’s home who are either physically or sexually abused by their ‘saviours’ is not the way forward.

So why not educate and empower the masses to bring poverty down. Everything cannot be done in a stretch but steps should be taken to get the kids off the street and into class rooms. Poverty should be tackled and jailed, then social vices will die down.