Few years ago in Ghana, it was almost unheard of that someone a bit below a septuagenarian will be entrusted with an important public service position.
The arguments concerning the need to have Ghanaian youths as leaders in modern government seem to be endless. After all, as the cliché posits, we are the leaders of today, not tomorrow, because we have waited for a long time, and this ‘tomorrow’ still remains elusive. But if the recent events of the past years are any indication, the youth will have to wait because the present dispensation of leaders are yet to get tired of governing because we are still operating a re-cycled system of governance.
Well, this write-up is not intended through the lens of any political divide. It is about the geographical space thus Ghana. It is about Ghanaian youth who are busy discussing Real Madrid, Chelsea Football Club, Arsenal etc, while our leaders continue to sing the same song in a different tune. It is about the Ghanaian youth who is busy with Ghana Meet Naija, Kumkum Bhagya and listening to ‘Taking Over’ by Shatta Wale to the extent that they have lost political consciousness. We have given up on ourselves and on our country thinking that this is not our business.
But that is not true. Government is everyone’s business. Aristotle even affirmed that man is by nature a political animal, that is, politically inclined. Most of us the Ghanaian youths are apolitical. Yet, we crave for change. Where will the change come from? Certainly not in our sitting rooms! We’re not camel or horses. We must not allow our leaders to continue to ride on our backs. They do not really care about us. To them, we are just pawns to be used for their mind games thus, we’re always useful during election years.
Juxtaposing comparatively past political events will show you the level of disconnection between the government and the “Youths”. This trend, if allowed to continue, will see many of us the youth on the sidelines of political governance for a very long time, while most of our ministers will be collecting both their pensions and allowances as former statesmen, talk about one eating his cake and still having it. In a country of abject unemployment, this is the height of selfishness, insensitivity and wickedness from our leaders down from the 1900s to this peak.
There’s this old adage meaning ‘…an elder cannot be in the marketplace and watch the head of the child go down.” Hence, not only have our leaders allowed the head of the child to go down, they have also trampled on that head. They have refused to fund youth projects, education, sponsorship etc. They send their families abroad. They refuse to make our roads motorable while they move around in SUV’s, V8s etc. They make sure death catches up with us in our prime. It is usually the child who buries the elder, but they have turned it the other way round. As a result of this negligence, our society is now plagued with hunger, unemployment, prostitution, armed robbery not to even talk about the recent practice of lynching innocent souls.
As if our woes are not enough, some party faithfuls who are youthful decide to sell their blue ribbon just because they have been offered messenger dumplings. Enough is enough.
The youth must begin to learn to show dignity of character and purpose. We must tell our leaders what we expect from them, instead of carrying placards and singing praises with the hope of getting 20 pieces of silver, instead of selling our conscience. At the end of the day, we benefit nothing from our ‘foolishness’.
We must begin to take ourselves seriously if ever we want our Leaders to respect us. There is nothing stopping a youth from becoming Minister of Youth and Sports. After all, the youth know and follow sports better than our older peeps. Heaven will not fall if a youth is made Minister of Finance. We understand education in this country because we went to schools here, so we know the challenges the sector faces.
But will the government be reasonable with us? No. They still prefer to have someone who went to Oxford or Harvard, instead of improving the sector, ends up fighting clan battle with the government appointees. Even the Ministry of Information needs a youth to head it. We are the masters of the jet age, aren’t we? The Information Ministry should also be within the purview of we the youth. Our leaders and elders cannot place a heavy premium on years of experience while we search for jobs, when they do not make any conscious effort to make us gather that experience. This is hypocrisy.
Unfortunately, no political party here in Ghana makes any serious efforts to grant the youth any prominence. You see some of the youth making bleak arguments on social media and address themselves with political divide they belong.
Even the readiness of the youth in handling responsibilities that comes with leadership in the public sector have been called to question, most prominently by one of my ebullient and charismatic mentor, who posited that the young people of this generation is neither ready nor capable of handling important government positions.
Inasmuch as I would like to disagree with my mentor’s position on this, I respect his opinion on the matter and I have done a retrospection and have concluded that he might be right after all.
Before the emergence of new media, young people where restricted to positions like special adviser on entertainment, tourism and youth affairs. But since the advent of these new forms of media, young people have been relegated to social media propagandists masquerading as special advisers on new media.
This generation have effectively turned itself to what I call a ‘NewMediaGeneration’. We campaign for the old and recycled men while secretly hoping that when they win they will be magnanimous enough to “give” us some scrums from the table.
Inopportunely, in the words of one of the greatest socialist juggernauts in Ghana “power is not given to you on a slate/plate”. Is it not befuddling and laughable that a demography with the highest number of voters are now beggars of mediocre appointments? The first and best step is for young people to participate more in the electoral process, during the 2016 general elections I conducted a non-scientific online poll to get a rough estimate of young people on Facebook that belongs to a political party. I was shocked by the result, out of 1,500 respondents only 9% are registered members of a political party.
In conclusion, as long as we continue to abstain from politics, we will remain well wishers and beggars of appointments, but if we participate and contest elective positions we will be a step closer to eradicating this democratic gerontocracy.
We can’t negotiate our future from the position of weakness, but from that of strength and intensity of purpose. We must realize quickly that this country ‘Ghana’ belongs to all of us, not just to a selected few. Anyone can aspire and become whatever he or she wants to be in this country.
By Mcmichael Nana Kojo Appiah
The writer is a student at the University of Ghana
Email: mappiah017@st.ug.edu.gh