Ghanaians cautioned against complacency

Accra, Feb. 24, GNA - Professor Kwesi Kwaa Prah, Executive Director, Centre for Advanced Studies of African Societies, Cape Town, on Saturday warned that if the current challenges facing the country were not addressed it would soon result in a situation not too different from her neighbours.
He said in West Africa, countries that were ostensibly stable had fallen like dominoes and degenerated into failed and anarchic societies racked by incessant tensions, conflict and mindless bloodletting. Prof. Prah made the remark at a public lecture organised by the Citizens of New Ghana in Accra as their contribution to Ghana's fiftieth anniversary celebration.
The lecture had the theme: "Fifty years of independence: Drawing the balance sheet and which way forward".
He said so many West African states had sunk into different levels of disorder, tin-pot dictatorship, war and warlordism, adding Nigeria was a dangerous tinder-box, who next".
Prof Prah stated that with present the hardship, which had served as the premise for most destabilised states, it would be absurd for Ghanaians to think that they were exceptional, adding, "It is a sort of fool's paradise and ostrich mentality we should steer clear of". He contended that by the end of the present regime and the immediate past one, the county would have seen three decades of inept, directionless, uninspired government.
"True enough the Rawlings regime was more cruel but the debate about whether the Rawlings regime was more corrupt than the Kufuor administration is ultimately a profitless exercise"' he added. Prof Prah said it was clear that many Ghanaians were disillusioned with both the present and the previous governments and in their mind if the coming elections were between the two parties then the offering was like a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.
"The options are frustrating and many say they will not vote, under these circumstances of voter apathy, disillusionment and suspicion of politicians, the slightest disturbances can rapidly escalate into crisis which would be difficult to roll back", he intimated.
He indicated that another soldier could take advantage of the situation and stage a coup saying the hordes of urban unemployed selling dog-chains, loaves of bread and boxes of matches were readymade social materials for chaos and violence that could be triggered.
Prof Prah held that fifty years after Ghana led the charge in sub-Saharan Africa for independence, the fifty odd states which had gained independence in this region were still hopelessly floundering, stuck in quagmire of unmitigated poverty and underdevelopment. He attributed the reason why the African states were caught in mission impossible to their departure and inability to carry forward the process of workable, sustained and credible developments of post-colonial state.
"The post-colonial states, or neo-colonial states in Africa have been largely unreformed colonial or client states, the colonial state in an economic, cultural and social sense was a state not created in the first instance to undividedly serve the interest of the colonised", he added.
Prof Prah noted that ethnicity could not be ruled out of politics and that it was fundamental to every society, adding that it should be rather given a democratic twist to reduce tensions and the element of divisiveness.
He said it was not appropriate for politicians to manipulate ethnicity for their political interests, noting that cultural differences run parallel to economic differentiation and sharply dictated different political interests. The Professor called for a form of decentralisation where local government machinery was empowered to decide on all matters affecting their localities and actively pursuing principles in the collective interest of the people.
Prof Prah noted that fifty years of Ghana's independence was not inconsiderable but it could not be done without Dr Kwame Nkrumah, as the political point of Ghana's arrival to statehood was he. 24 Feb. 07