By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
February 4, 2017
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

We are a nation of leaders who have absolutely no vision and foresight, except constantly scheming to squander the monetary and other material resources that could be profitably and meaningfully used to develop our country. And so I was amused in no small measure when, while China’s Ambassador to Ghana was being welcomed to Parliament House in a courtesy call, Speaker Aaron Michael Oquaye had the temerity to describe Ghana as a great nation, at the same time that he was pleading with Ms. Sun Baohong to contribute towards the construction of a new chamber block for the House (See Parliament Is Really In Need – Speaker” Ghana News Agency/Ghanaweb.com 2/5/17).

You see, great nations are not in the perennial, shameless and routine habit of begging other nations for such basic necessities as a building to house their National Assembly Representatives. I suppose this sense of shameless beggarliness stems from the fact of the Chinese government’s generosity in building us a National Theater. I eagerly await the day when our leaders would be less quick to make importunate demands like the one in question, and instead learn about creative means of wisely managing our resources and making the same serve the basic needs of our people. I also hope our leaders recognize the fact that there is absolutely no free lunch anywhere on Earth.

You see, you can’t expect the Chinese government, which has more poor people far in excess of Ghana’s and, indeed, our entire continent’s population, to take care of to send their engineers and resources to construct our Parliament House for us, and not expect Chinese-generated galamsey activities in the country to exacerbate or get worse. Prof. Oquaye may have so soon forgotten this, but those of us avid watchers of the Ghanaian political scene have not forgotten that scandalous day, a couple of years ago, when a Deputy Chinese Foreign Minister called a press conference in the heart of our nation’s capital, without permission from Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and caustically lambasted the Mahama government for the shabby treatment of Chinese nationals caught in the drag-net of galamsey-raiding security agents.

As a people, it embarrassingly appears that we are extremely slow to learn any worthwhile lessons in self-love, self-worth and dignity. I suppose this knee-jerk tendency to beg also partly emanates from the fact of China’s having constructed, gratis, the new African Union (AU) Building in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. The Chinese government has also been known to offer quite a slew of scholarships to Ghanaians who desire to study in some of their most prestigious tertiary academies. If I may ask: How often does the Government of Ghana offer scholarships to Chinese students to come and study at the University of Ghana, or any of our major public institutions? I pose this question because in the report of his diplomatic conversation with Ms. Sun Baohong, Speaker Oquaye was reported to have highlighted the “good bilateral relations” between our two countries. What sort of one-way bilateralism is this?

We have also not forgotten former Foreign Minister Hanna Tetteh’s elementary school building “birthday gift” from Ms. Sun. I am not saying that it is invariably bad to solicit and receive foreign aid or assistance once awhile. What I am clearly implying here is that there are simply some basic things that no self-respecting people or nation should expect the leaders and governments of other nations to do for them. And the construction of a new and bigger Parliament House or Chamber is not, and ought not to be, one of them. Indeed, our leaders ought to have thought about the size of our National Assembly edifice when Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the former Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), recklessly proceeded to increase the membership and seating of the august House by a whopping 33-percent. Are we so shamelessly beggarly in our manners because we are also so cognitively and morally blind as a people and a nation?

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs