WE RECITED THE PLEDGE BUT COULDN’T COMMIT

I see the problem of Africa (with special reference to my own nation, Ghana) as the lack of true commitment to our nation and continent; we just don’t love this country enough; our attitude can be likened to Jesus' words in Matthew 15:7-8 “You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied correctly about you: ‘These people honour Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me". I say this because if we truly loved this nation, we will not commit the level of atrocities we commit wilfully against her. Many have often asked, "what is in it for me?" before they ever considered the welfare and advancement of mother Ghana. #revjoeapenteng

Every Ghanaian may quickly say they love this nation, but we treat this ‘mother’ wickedly, constantly doing things that undermine its advancement. My earliest memory of showing public allegiance to my country would be when we marched under the scorching sun, with heavily starched khakis, while responding to the "eyes right!" at our usual 6th March parades. In addition to this was reciting faithfully and daily the national pledge, promising to remain faithful and loyal to Ghana our motherland. Fast forward a few years from then, and even my generation who recited the pledge daily, are involved in all kinds of activities that have maimed the progress of our beautiful nation. #accralondonaccra

I have tried to understand these words, now as an adult, and wondering if we truly understood these strong vows, we were made to take daily. Thank God for mercy! In fact, if we were living in Old Testament days, we could all be in trouble for breaking our vows, and worthy of capital punishment, 'haha!!', because the least offender could be guilty of fouling, as most of us men particularly once upon a time have urinated on a wrong wall. We daily vowed to make our nation better than we met it, but I know I am not the only one who took this for granted; we were not made to believe in these words because looking around, it is very evident that most of us couldn't honour them. We didn't even know how strong and binding those words were. #communitydevelopmentinafrica

I just spoke to my senior brother, veteran Ghanian journalist, Nana Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng, who just recited to me the Kwame Nkrumah pledges they recited in primary school and boy! that was even heavier than the vows we took - "Acheampong's pledge" which was recited daily in all primary schools in the country, which I believe became necessary because of the attitude of many Ghanaians who had lost their love and commitment to the nation. This was the era of ‘Kalabule', which was called 'Kala' for short, where even children sinned wilfully against the state, condoning the evils of our fathers and mothers who were ready to hike prices, hoard goods and more, to the degree that we even thought it was the acceptable way of life. By the time I was entering secondary school what was deemed ‘essential’ in our daily common consumables like milk, tin fish, soap, butter, toothpaste and more was becoming short on the market and one needed to have ‘connections’ to get some of these essential commodities. ‘Connections’ was like knowing the Store Manager, or that you knew someone who knew his wife. Even in school, we were made to form long queues when the GNTC retail truck arrived, to buy some of these essential commodities in rations. So tensed were these moments that one senior concluded we the form one students did not have the right to enjoy these privileges (see nepotism at work already). #pccilondon

TV and magazine images of The West were enticing to many of my generation. We felt the best way out of our situations was to run run run, run anywhere but Ghana, but until one had the opportunity to escape all one could do was to keep dreaming of the day and time it will happen ‘for real’, and honestly, conversations about this were endless. One of our friends said all his dreams were full of images of Europe and America, and another said: “you have arrived! others cheering, just for a dream”. Friends talked about applying for colleges in America and Europe. One’s heart was getting drawn daily to a life outside of this ‘hell’ as one of my friends who was named ‘PANAM’ called our beautiful country; this is a guy who wanted so badly to fly out to the USA in the then US Airline, he was named PANAM. May God forgive PANAM because he was just an ignorant and angry young man who felt let down by a system, and I don't know if he managed to make it to America, he must have repented by now for calling Ghana 'Hell', perhaps desiring so much to come back to this “Hell”.

Today, after traveling the length and breadth of this planet, I can never ever refer to Ghana as a hell, NEVER! I can boldly say we have the very best of God's creation. In fact, I only found out after arriving in England that they also have mega problems, that daily need human and physical capital to solve, and adding to this, people with unflinching commitment, and where this is lacking, we produce substandard work for the nation. While citizens of other nations in the spirit of nationalism built roads with their bare hands, we were so fed up with ours, and wanting so badly to walk away from it all or to stay and destroy with our own hands. What we lacked was leadership and commitment - the kind that people have, when they become ready to achieve with their last breath. Unfortunately, we only commit after asking 'What's in it for me?'.

At the end of the seventies into the eighties, as the debts of our nation mounted, so was the filth in our gutters and streets, in fact, everything went downhill. We could all tell something had really gone wrong at the top, trickling down to all levels of society, in fact, some big men at the very top had failed us, ruining further our efforts to commit. If you were the son or daughter of a poor person you couldn't commit to the development of a nation, which only took care of the rich. Honestly, so many poor people simply waited for their own time and opportunity to start scrambling for their share of the loot. You employ them in government and their minds are already made up before they even start work - they don't say 'it’s time for me to contribute to the development of the nation", they say "my time has come to enjoy also'. The desire for many of us young people to abandon Ghana for greener pastures in the Western Hemisphere was strengthened because those who led from the front taught us not to love Ghana because they didn't love Ghana.

As if this sinking economy may miraculously bounce back, we waited and waited but things got worse, then teachers began to leave to seek greener pastures in nearby Nigeria. That raised many alarm bells. That was scary because, on the ‘loyalty to country’ spectrum, I placed teachers on a very high level, so when teachers abandoned their pupils to look for greener pastures, it was certain that something had really gone bad. At first, they were not many, then they started moving away in droves, refusing again to lead us to sing our daily anthems and say our pledges, "God bless our homeland Ghana and I promise on my honour to be faithful and loyal”. The more we looked into the future with pained distress, the more our loyalties were eroded and solidarity broke into pieces.

At this point, those of us who remained said 'what is good for the goose is also good for the gander'. Many began to ‘chop-chop’ wherever the opportunity presented itself, as those of us without the ability to "chop" looked on helplessly with our hearts broken. Indeed this nation has been raped so badly over and over again by its own people and now must come salvation for this beautiful 'mother' called Ghana. For some years now we have seen the desire of many to rebuild this nation into what it was freed to become, GREAT AND STRONG. After three decades away from home and traveling the nations, I can confidently say there is nowhere like home, and it doesn't matter how long you live in another man's country in his eyes he still sees you and your children as foreigners. Without faulting for now those whose wish has continually been to make us slaves and servants, we should now be ready to defy all the odds and begin committing ourselves to build this nation in the spirit of true nationalism. Pledging ourselves to the service of Ghana with all our strength and all our heart, promising now, to hold in high esteem, our heritage won for us through the blood and toil of our fathers and pledging ourselves in all things to uphold and defend the good name of Ghana. And may God bless those who rise to build. #bishopfredapenteng