“The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up to the total liberation of Africa”, Dr Kwame Nkrumah said on the eve of independence.
If Dr.Kwame Nkrumah was alive today, his words would be ‘the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it backed up with common sense”.
We celebrated Ghana at 50 in a grand style with big parties and banquets, costing over 30 million dollars when we had about 80 Ghanaian children dying of malaria each day. And then just after this spending, we went to beg the then US President-George Bush for 17 million dollars to fight malaria…
What do you call this?
5 years after the huge celebration of Ghana at 50, we spent millions of dollars on expensive cars and banquets again, celebrating Ghana at 55.
Today, Ghana is 56 years old and we are weighed down by basic problems such as unavailability of electricity and water, courtesy our lack of common sense to establish priorities.
Just 2 days ago in Accra, President John Mahama read the 2013 budget which he mentioned that, he has allocated to the Creative Arts Industry (this comprises of Music, Movie, Creative Writing, Arts, etc) 3 million Ghana Cedis ($1.5 million) for its development and improvement (Para 193, Ghana Budget, 2013). This attracted huge applauds in parliament and jubilation from those in the creative arts industry.