Features
The threat to our future as a nation
The threat facing our future as a nation is not a nuclear reactor disaster or a Tsunami or some natural disaster. What is an imminent threat to our dear nation is the indiscipline of our young people who are the future leaders of our country.
The whole nation has been shocked by videos on social media by students in final year of senior high school who are writing their WASSCE and the unacceptable behaviour they demonstrated.
Teenagers having the guts to insult not just an elderly person, but a whole President of the nation, and having the guts to record and post it on social media, is just mind boggling. It gives the impression that there is a deep-seated underlying issue that has to be addressed in order to resolve this lack of respect for adults in our society.
Since the issue broke out, there has been a lot of talk about what is happening to our youth that has led to the deviant behaviour of these youth. The rationale behind it is that these are the people who in the near future would become adults and not just adults but people who would hold leadership and sensitive positions in this country.
If such people have questionable ethics and moral integrity, only God knows what will happen to our country.
The issue of human rights and the way some people in this country adopt certain ideas has to be critically examined. There is a perception that this phenomenon of human rights in all sectors of our secular and social lives is a contributing factor to the indiscipline being displayed by the current generation.
Those of us who attended school in the 70s and the 80s can testify that the happenings among young people in the primary and secondary schools now, was not happening in those days. It is unthinkable how a student in those days could muster the courage to openly insult an elderly person, let alone the President of the nation.
The agenda of certain non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is a contributory factor to this problem of lack of proper or acceptable behaviour among our youth. They have been harassing and lobbying government officials as well as Ghana Education Service (GES) officials and teacher organisations to grant certain rights to the school children.
This has resulted in prohibition of caning as a means of correction in schools, contrary to something that even the Bible advocates as a means of correcting the errant child. There is no scientific proof that caning a child as a means of correction or as a punishment for wrong behaviour, will affect him psychologically.
Somehow, they have managed to create this perception and people have bought into it, so all of us have accepted their assertions and have decided not to correct children the way they should. We should, therefore, not be surprised at the way things are going with our youth.
The proliferation of foreign movies is also one of the major causes of the indiscipline attitude of the youth. The culture of the young people in the movies is so alien to ours and it gives our youth the wrong impression that they are being restricted in the way they wish to express themselves.
This begins to cause them to gradually develop a kind of rebellious attitude which ultimately results in the display of wrong behaviour towards the elderly. What they fail to realise is that, the parents of the youth they watch in those movies are frustrated in how to effectively deal with their wards.
The parents in the foreign countries have become frustrated because they are restricted by law on how to effectively guide their children by exercising the right parental control. They cherish some of the methods we in Africa employ in our parenting approach, but unfortunately some people here have copied wrongly and believe that we should give children unfettered freedom.
Peer pressure is another cause of the indiscipline in our schools and this is where we need the cooperation of the teachers and school authorities in general to be up and doing. Peer pressure is a very powerful influence which, if not properly addressed, would cause some students to go wayward.
It is not so serious at the lower levels that is, at the primary and junior high schools. It is more prominent at the senior high school level where the students are in their teens and are psychologically most vulnerable to such influences.
Technological advances have brought in its wake another problem in the form of social media platforms. The internet has provided an avenue for children or young people to be exposed to all manner of negative influences.
The conversation on those media has the potential to influence young people who see them as the new way to speak your mind to the elderly people who they view as always trying to restrict them from speaking their mind.
People use insulting language on these social media platforms almost all the time, especially against political leaders. No wonder the recent incident involving some SHS final year students who put up despicable behaviour of insulting the president.
There must be a review of the disciplinary regime in place in our schools where caning should be reinstated as a means of correction.
The regulations must include a legal action against parents who invade schools to attack teachers who cane their children as part of the normal disciplinary measures when students break school regulations.
These attacks on teachers have negatively impacted on the implementation of discipline in many schools in the country. The teachers as a result of these attacks develop an attitude of nonchalance and, therefore, gloss over the negative attitudes of the students in the various schools.
The wrong antisocial behaviours of the students go on unchecked and these habits degenerate into bad characters and the resultant effect is the display of insulting behaviour.
This get-quick-results mentality that has become imprinted in our mentality as a nation also has something to do with this dishonourable behaviour among our youth. Some of the messages being preached from the pulpit also have something to do with the decadent conduct of our youth.
You hear of preachings that promote the sale of pens which ostensibly have miraculous powers to let students pass their exams. Handkerchiefs and other paraphernalia which when applied can assist one to pass his or her exams are being sold by so called prophets.
Instead of teaching people the value of hard work and that to pass an exam, serious studying is what is required, these one-man-church prophets propagate these false teachings.
The youth have, therefore, been sold a lie and have been conscientised into thinking that there are short cuts to success. When they find out the hard way that there are no short cuts to success, then they become frustrated and vent their spleen on the leaders in society.
The quicker laws are enacted to deal with such so called men of God, the better it would be for all of us, especially the youth.
Laud Kissi-Mensah
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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