We Are Our Own Problems

News reports tricking in from across the regions within the last few days brings to mind a generic Ghanaian proverb paraphrased as “when you point one finger at someone, there are three fingers pointing back to you”, which aptly describes the situation we find ourselves as Ghanaians living in Ghana.

We tend to complain of corruption, growing lawlessness and other social vices; passing the blame and heaping cruel accusations on leadership and all others but ourselves. That’s what we have become; quick to focus on the speck in someone’s eye but ignoring the log in ours.

In parts of the Greater Accra Region for instance, it has taken city authorities to literally compel and threaten residents with arrest and prosecution because they reluctantly complied with the operation clean your own frontage policy.

Aren’t we  our own problems of it now has to take threats of arrest and prosecution before grown up adults who are presumed to be a part of the right thinking members of society grudgingly  tidy their own places of abode?

Yet the same persons would gleefully yell out complaints of how dirty and smelly Accra has become these days, blaming all others but themselves.

The same Ghanaians that decided to unite to fight against ILLEGAL small scale mining because of the adverse effects on the environment are the same persons involved in the act.

Reports from Akyem Asunafo in Atiwa West District in the Eastern Region have it that last Friday, one person was confirmed dead while eight others suffered gunshot wounds simply because residents were resisting the activities of illegal miners in the community.

On same Friday, reports from Ellembelle in the Western Region were that rioters had vandalized windows and louver blades of a local police station there in protest of the shooting to death of a resident in front of the Nkroful Magistrate’s court.

As if vandalizing the police station was not enough, they went ahead and destroyed the windscreens of two buses and a pickup truck among others.

The deceased was said to be a part of persons demonstrating at the court premises over the arrest of some 40 or so illegal miners when they clashed with military personnel.

As a people, if we do not want the continuation of illegal small scale mining, who then are the persons still boldly involved to an extent that it has led to loss of precious lives?

Are we not truly our own problems?

Then the issue of corruption; how many Ghanaians are not willing to pass a ‘brown envelope’ under the table to cut corners and unfairly influence laid down procedures.

Just take a casual visit to our courts to count the number of traditional leaders who are standing trial for the a deliberate and multiple resale of sold lands and the problems it has created for business investors and well as private developers.

Sadly there are chiefs and traditional leaders involved in this crass madness. As though the crowns on their heads and the stools they occupy are costumes for perpetuating fraud.

But as usual, the typical Ghanaian, in a characteristic pretentious holier-than-thou gimmick, would point an accusing forefinger at government and leadership for  the continuing nature of some of these problems.

Anyway…..