Modern youth ignoring our rich culture a cause to worry, let's all be ambassadors - CNC Director:

The Ashanti Regional Director of the Center for National Culture, Mr. Emmanuel Ansu has bemoaned how the youth of today have ignored our cultural values. Speaking to the media after the celebration of the Ashanti Regional Festival of Arts and Culture (REFAC) at the Kumasi Cultural Center, Mr. Ansu said some of the cultural values have declined because the youth of today no longer show interest in it. According to him, it was very worrying that the youth now prefer foreign culture to our rich culture, adding that it was time to sensitize the youth on the need to embrace our rich culture at the expense of the other foreign ones. He said we can only achieve that by doing a collaborative effort between stakeholders such as chiefs, elders, and workers at the Center for National Culture where the youth may be educated on the need to embrace our culture and its subsequent benefits. He said it was time Ghanaians do appreciate culture as the genesis of moral development and structuring of individuals for successful nation-building. Expatiating much about culture, Mr. Emmanuel Ansu, said, culture was not and should not only be seen as the art of drumming and dancing, eating and clothing. But he said culture should also be used as a means of promoting patriotism, peace and unity in society and selling the nation to the rest of the world. Touching on the definition of culture as a way of life, Mr. Ansu said someone’s way of life today shall surely determine where he would be tomorrow, hence the need to value our rich culture which defines us in a positive way. He has therefore urged everyone to see culture as the basic ethics in the propulsion of good moral standards. As earlier indicated, Mr. Ansu made these remarks during this year’s celebration of the Ashanti Regional Festival of Arts and Culture (REFAC), under the theme, "Reviving, Patriotism, and unity through cultural diversity for sustainable development". The biennial REFAC, which precedes the National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFAC), suffered a four-year interruption due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to reports. The national celebration which will take place in Cape Coast is scheduled for December 9 to 16, 2022, and will be represented by every region. Mr. Ansu continued by urging all Ghanaians to be ambassadors of our rich culture so that it would sell to the rest of the world. Delivering a speech on the part of the executive director of the National Commission on Culture (NCC), Mr. Richardson Fio Comey, director for policy planning and research monitoring and evaluation at the NCC- Accra said Ghana was part of the global communities, and anything that happens in another place affects the country directly or indirectly as a people. He said, the celebration of REFAC and NAFAC, must not be limited to the usual display of the pomp and pageantry scenes that often characterize their celebrations, but as a nation, it must be factored into events of this nature that will imbibe into the younger generation a sense of patriotism, nationalism and selfless ideals. This, he explained would not only be preparing the young ones to take up the mantle of leadership of this country in the future but also, bequeathing to them the treasured values and ideals embedded in Ghanaian cultures which our (Ghanaians) ancestors stood up for in building the Ghanaian society. Mr. Fio Commey reminded the gathering that the happenings elsewhere have potentially damning effects on the Ghanaian way of life because of globalization and any attempt not to show concern may plunge the country further into the menace of cultural diminution. Adding her voice, the chairperson of the occasion, Nana Konama Dampon III, Queen mother of the Mpasaaso traditional area, urged Ghanaians especially, the youth to stop ignoring our rich culture where she indicated that adopting foreign culture to replace our rich one won't send us anywhere. She also blamed part of the problem on the fact that most of the youth of today do not know the norms and values of our rich culture where she called on all stakeholders to come together to sensitize the youth on the need to embrace the Ghanaian culture.