Projecting What Binds Us

The very great things that we, as a people, can achieve together when united, has never been in doubt.

As Ghanaians, our individual desires and collective consciousness on the crucial need to strengthen the unity among us, as a people, has also never been in doubt. Making a concerted daily effort in our own small ways to make this desire crystalize into reality is what should be our focus as we begin this new year.

THE PUBLISHER, calls on our leaders, be they political, religious or traditional leaders to do well to galvanize the efforts of the people into one huge united front. We should be seen to be focusing on the things that unite us rather than the things that divide us.

No matter which part of this country one may hail from, we are Ghanaians and we recite one national pledge and sing one national anthem. This is enough reason to remind us all constantly that our country comes first and we should be committed to making it a better place for us all and for posterity.

It is not uncommon to hear people say “oh Ghanaians are a peaceful people”, “oh Ghanaians only talk but they can never go to war”. Well, we beg to differ because there are examples of other countries which believed their citizens were peaceful people who could never war among themselves until the unthinkable happened.

We want everyone to be on constant alert that no one is born as an unpeaceful person. It is circumstances and situations that makes people become unpeaceful and want to war-war instead of jaw-jaw.

And such circumstances are usually not one-off events but gradual accumulation incidents.  Petty incidents that we often ignore or take for granted but go deep in hurting he feelings of some.

It is the reason we must guard our tongues. The good book urges us to tame our tongue, which it calls an “unruly evil.”

We have unwisely taken for granted the growing ugly culture of free for all insults, provocation, and hate speeches in our cyber and social media sphere. We have taken for granted the loose talks from some of what has become known as ‘serial callers’, a euphemism for politicians paid, trained and tasked to call into radio and television programmes to tout their political parties’ interests.

We have taken for granted how the media loosely created enmity for a group of people we have tagged as “Fulani”.

We have taken for granted the proliferation of arms, both small and sophisticated in a country where the majority of youth are unemployed, frustrated and disillusioned.

We have taken too many dangerous signals for granted and forgotten these are ingredients that could trigger something unwanted.

We hope and pray that as a people, we would guard our tongues and watch against actions and inactions that could affect the unity among us because we stand to achieve great and might things if we remain united as a people and build on it.