Ghana will be 57 years on Thursday March 6, as an independent nation but former Flagbearer Aspirant Prof Agyeman Badu Akosa says the country is an “apology of an independent country.”

Prof Akosa argues that: “We’ve lost the significance of independence because we’ve given back to the colonial masters everything that we fought for, for independence. So for me, I think independence has now become almost like just a word.”

According to him, “the significance of [independence] is such that, today it’s the World Bank and all the UN agencies that think for us. It’s the various Embassies in this country that think for us.” The Pathologist told Moro Awudu on the XYZ Breakfast Show on Wednesday that: “We’ve lost our political independence.”

“It was ‘seek ye first the political kingdom and everything else’, and immediately after that, the Government moved to ensuring economic emancipation for this country. And if you imagine that in a matter of almost between 57 and 66, this country was littered with so many industries using what we have. Three Bamboo industries; two of them, I think, are lost. There’s only one that is functioning. One in Assin Fosu that somebody has bought and is running but we’ve got bamboo so why did we allow those two bamboo industries to get lost?

“We’ve got clay deposits everywhere. We had Satlpond ceramics. What happened to Saltpond ceramics? Now we buy tiles from everywhere and yet we could have been producing these things ourselves so we’ve lost our essence. And as far as I am concerned, yes we celebrate 6th March [but] it’s just tokenism…but are we truly independent? Are we truly independent? These are questions that we probably must put to our political leaders,” Prof Akosa said.