BY ISSAH S. SULEMANA

It has always been my cherished ambition to be a writer of some sort, who will feed my readers with all kinds of news, informing them and educating them and also learning from them all kinds of new things most especially new words. Though, I studied Accounting I didn’t let go my pet fondness for the English language. The advent of Ghanaweb afforded me an intellectual pleasure as I will always read all articles and their comments most especially those written by Professor Akoampa Ahoofe, Professor Akadu Mensima, etc. ctc.

Despite the fact that these are the best writers you can find on line, the controversial nature of the subject they write and what they stand for politically, they are always the bull’s eye attracting all sort of violent criticism from people who under normal circumstances would not have even been qualified to be their students. Surprisingly, people with senior high school backgrounds are computer literates who facilely presume to be a repository of knowledge for every subject on planet earth.

My beef here is not against criticism, but it should be constructive criticism, after all, we are all Ghanaians. The situation where people target the personality of writers instead of the substance of the topic under review is repugnantly unfair. A conspicuous example of such absurdity is Mr. Abdul Sidibe’s article posted on Ghana Web 10th March, 2013 captioned, Nana Addo is proudly 'un-Ghanaian' where Mr. Abdul sought to rejoin on the professor's article of the above caption. Suffice it to state that Mr. Abdul decended into a bottomless pit of malignity and thereby did not address the issues raised by professor Akoampa in his original treatise of the subject matter. Naturally, lets make an effort to contribute to solve issues/problems removing our political, ethnocentric or age-old hatred spectacles or our quest for development will elude us with a flourish. I strongly believe that Ghana has what it takes to be at par with the developed countries in terms of natural and labour resources but first we must see each other as one people with a common destiny. Again, what i believe to a vast extend account for our snail-pace development agenda is the snide remarks made by some of our geographically-fortunate brethen from the southern part of Ghana. It is an undeniable fact that, some of our brothers and sisters from the south, have a penchant for spewing unprintable insults to our northern brothers and sisters on the slightest provocation based on an unfounded assumption that they are more Ghanaian or a superior race of a kind who should not be measured with down-trodden, maladorous and rustic northerners. This unpleasant state of affairs trigger an irrisistible avalanche of virtuous indignation by almost all northeners and adjust them to an extreme degree of vengeful mode. And rightly so, for Newton's law attest to this by stating that, 'To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction'. Some politicians also capitalise on this to further sow seeds of discord. A good question to ask is how do we bring our God-given talents together to develop? Following some comments made by some article writers and contributors to GhanaWeb one gets the falacious impression that All northeners are NDC supporters and are branded as such.

Nontheless, there is still some vestige of hope regarding our ability to solve ethnicity, name calling and atrocious hatred for each other. I believe persistent eduction right from the basic level should be enforced to disabuse peoples minds of being superior or feeling an inferiority complex which can have adverse effects on our bid to forge ahead as a nation. None is a paragon of virtue regarding what is good behaviour. I shall return.

Source: Issah Sulemana

Email: isasu21@gmail.com A native of Garu-Tempane Currently at Bawku Senior High School, Business Department. Cell phone: 0261883211.