Where cometh our help?

On Friday January 20th, 1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president of the United States. In his inaugural address, he delivered a memorable line that remains deafening, resonant and stentorian in the hearts and minds of all Americans; “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”. This statement was a shot in the arm, a reiterating re-awakening clarion cry bolstering and boosting the people’s mindset about nation-building. What JFK was alluding to was that nation-building is a divine assignment for all citizens, not just a few.

In Ghana, we share the same sentiments. We know it is a good idea, but for reasons not in alignment with good reasoning, many good people are slumbering off. Good ideas in the hands of good people always get better with time. But anytime good ideas get in the traps and snares of bad people, they become bad ideas. Ghana is a good idea, but today across the board, the lachrymal truth is that the country is strapped in the noose of few powerful, clueless, rudderless characters whose self-acclaimed love of country is a farce, a fiction, a burlesque and a parody. That is why Ghanaians are asking today; “where cometh our help”?

When the future of a nation is left swathed up in warts in the hands of platoons of tomfoolery and retrogrades, a double-edged sword of endemic and pandemic automatically become the results, and the entire citizenry feel the effect of the quotidian lancination that did not emerge in paroxysm. In such environment, the climb to survive as a nation becomes steeper. It is the duty and obligation of all citizens of a nation to participate in the process of nation- building and harness their gifting and grace with others’ to build. Whether you agree with me or not, this is where our help start coming from.

If Ghana is a good idea, governance must then be reposed in the hands of good people. Any good idea in the hands of bad people is an architectural design for dystopia and insalubrities. It elicits a distraught when people who are endowed and capable of building now sit in the fence and have become onlookers and spectators of the spiraling, swirling spectacles of shambolic art of governance in their own land. These are men and women of immense gravitas who speak loftily on Radio and TV, who articulate thoughts flawlessly in cyberspace, who have facts, figures and clear foresights and vision, but chose to stay recumbent and recluse from the main event of controlling the gavel of government. I know their excuses; we all hear it every day.

For these great individuals, the dirt and stench that have enveloped the Ghanaian politics have kept them away, and the banditry, massacres, thuggery and turpitude are caution lights for them. This is understandable, but they must remember that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Good people are the deliverance that Ghana needs to confront the head-wind of all that threatens to decapitate and incapacitate us as a people. Evil and heartlessness have taken over every crevice and fissure of our society, and good people’s most convenient option is to keep complaining about what’s wrong with Ghana, and not campaigning for a change.

Men and women of integrity, status, stature, ability and capability, men and women trained, tried, tested and interested have left themselves in the snuffing clutches and grips of half-baked hawkers of emptiness and ambassadors of buffoonery. The desecrating die-hards continue to bully us into submission and systematic extinction telling us what to do, how to live, how to die, how to run our businesses, what curriculum we run in schools, when we enjoy the supply of electricity, what must work and what mustn’t. You and I have allowed the balcony of government to become a hotbed of the hotheaded, and a sanctuary for the madcap. Withered and crippled hands are at the command and control center, and their mendacity has put the country on a death row waiting for amnesty or a marching order into the gas chamber. No matter how beautiful and expensive a house is, when abandoned, others who have need of it take over. Clueless people are taking over the terrain, and the country is now at the mercy of the merciless. God must help us!

One good man or woman in the midst of wolves will come out more like a wolf and a failure. The truth I speak wholly and always is that if we have any hope for Ghana evolving as a great nation, good people must massively with overwhelming numerical force get involved and run for offices, from the Presidency to the local government counsellorship. The results will surprise you.

We must not be afraid to challenge those who are bringing challenging times to our doorsteps. We must let them know that we are too conscionable to be bought over by money, contracts, jeeps, and promises of positions. We are all part of how we can make good governance happen. If you are reading this, someday you may be the president that the world will call the greatest, the parliamentarian your constituency has been expecting, the ambassador the nation has been preparing, you may be the minister your region has been praying to have or that the people have dreamed to have in their corner. You may be the one through whom Ghana’s help will come.

Ghana is presently lying helplessly on a stretcher and waiting for amnesty or a marching order into the gas chamber like I said earlier or the grave for its interment has been dug. Mourners are wailing and adversaries are waiting. But on that stretcher is a nation with weak but still palpable vital signs. Its major organs may have been damaged, but remedy is available only through good people.