Features
Dealing with the sinking moral
Watching a video trending on social media recently about some of the negative moral values of our youths, I was amazed and asked myself what the future holds for them in this modern-day Ghana. The video in question was about a young couple, the male being a driver of one of these specialised taxis (Uber) with the wife a housewife. Looking at them critically, I could say that they would be in their late twenties. It was early in the morning and the husband gave some money to the wife to cook while he left the house for work. Soon after the husband had left the house, the woman called another man on his mobile phone (apparently her boyfriend), told him she was paying a short visit since she had missed him a lot. The boyfriend agreed to that request and the girl went over.
WIFE CAUGHT ‘RED-HANDED’
After a good time and also enjoying themselves well, the man decided to hire a taxi through his phone to convey the girlfriend who was in a hurry back home. Lo and behold, it was the husband of the girlfriend who drove to the man’s house to pick the lady. As the taxi parked behind the gate of the man, waiting for the supposed passenger, the two came out from the house and shockingly enough, that was the wife of the taxi driver. The boyfriend did not know the girl’s husband but the girl, upon seeing her husband felt ashamed and started begging him for forgiveness.
This scenario and many obscene videos trending on social media, should vividly tell us how morally corrupt our youths have become in our dear society. They have imported all kinds of dirty and negative practices from the so-called advanced countries and are practising them openly with no regard to the elderly. Is that the civilisation we are clamouring for in our dear country? God save our nation.
IMMORAL YOUTHS
The youths of today, are quite disappointing as most of them have lost their conscience and are engaged in all kinds of promiscuous and adultery practices to the detriment of their future lives. They do not want to be corrected whatsoever when they do the wrong things. The proliferation of churches in this country, some with dubious inclinations has worsened the lifestyles of the youths, many of whom hide behind them to do just the unthinkable and go scot free. The leaders of most of these so-called churches do not have control over the youth. Some of our youths attend churches, listen to various sermons for the sake of them but do the vice with serious implications.
LACK OF PARENTAL CARE
Most parents have little or no control over their children and wards in their tender age and, therefore, they do the amazing things to the astonishment of their parents. Is it not surprising that at the age of 18 years and little above, the youths mostly the young girls, who are in their teens, will be thinking of marriage when in actual sense they are not matured in terms of home management and child upbringing. It is a fact that some parents also contribute to these shortcomings by pushing their immature youth to enter into marriages without considering their ages. Some parents, even with some connivance of pastors and church elders, secretly bless the marriages of their under-age children. The moral decadence among the youth of today is, indeed, not the best thing to talk about in present day Ghana.
It is rightly stated that the future of any nation rests on the shoulders of the youths, as they will eventually become leaders of tomorrow. Therefore, anything targeted at this group of persons must be worthwhile and directed at helping to fulfil their purpose as would be leaders.
ACQUISITION OF GOOD MORAL VALUES
As the youths get prepared for leadership roles, it is pertinent to acquire good moral values and standards that will mold them into personalities ready to lead for the progress of the society since they serve as engine room of society. They serve as the drivers of any development trend activity in society and the major determinant of the extent of growth and development in a given society. It is a fact that the youths of today are usually energetic and are always willing to go the extra mile if the need arises to achieve the goals they have set themselves and what they believe in and to hold on to them.
Our youths continue to hold on to some negative values such as dishonesty, disrespect, intolerance, lack of cooperation, profit-oriented relationships, profane of life and abuse of human dignity, loss of pride in hard work and an increased interest in the pursuit of injustice and other crimes, all in a bid to acquire wealth. Today, most of our youths take pride in telling lies, engage in ungodly practices and embellishment of various criminal acts.
SERVING AS ROLE MODELS
It is a fact that our youths have deviated from the path of righteousness and society must be ready to help in instilling that discipline which is so crucial in their upbringing. The family which is the base structure of every society, must begin to right their wrongs with regard to restructuring their value systems because most of the youths learn from the elders in their families. Government and other authorities, especially those in leadership positions must see themselves as role models for the youths and begin to be responsible adults. They have to realise that the future of tomorrow depends on the foundation laid today and the youths cannot become trusted leaders if they cannot follow in trust.
HELPING THE YOUTHS FROM WAYWARDNESS
The Ministries of Youth and Sports, Children, Gender and Social Protection as well as other youth development and protection organisations, need to collaborate efforts to devise effective mechanisms and tailor-measured programmes designed to educate the youths to shape up their waywardness and prepare them as responsible adults to our society. Parents must also offer the necessary parental care to their adolescent children and not to push them into early marriages which serve no purpose but only to destroy their lives. Marriages among the youths are breaking today because of immaturity and also lack of proper counselling to the youths of today.
We need to help our youths to overcome this moral decadence that have engulfed our dear society. That kind of moral discipline that was introduced by the older generation which seemed to have eluded us now, must be sought and rekindled into our society so that the youths of today, must emulate and conform to it to safeguard their lives.
By Charles Neequaye
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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