The Price Of Independence II
By Prosper-Michael Ametu
On the 6th of March this year, Ghana celebrated her sixty-sixth year as an independent nation. An event which in previous years was greeted with great fanfare seemed an insipid affair. The common man no longer takes interest in self-adulation of the memory of a costly transaction because his country’s independence means nothing to him on an empty stomach. The common man is angry! Angry, but not angry enough to trade his blood, sweat and tears in another hopeless enterprise that would see him lose his little food and the civil liberties he has left.
What the common man does not know is that he has been lied to; the price of independence was never blood, sweat and tears. The price of independence was faith – the audacious faith of that man Dr Kwame Nkrumah to claim that “the black man is capable of managing his own affairs”. That audacious faith that has been lost due to the repeated success of partisan politics and corporate greed in bastardizing the pillars of independence with clandestine operations led by selfish people. That lack of faith has led the common man to give up on his dreams of a better Ghana but without faith to consistently play our role in governing this country until we get it right there is no independence. Unless the common man stays true to that audacious faith, he has never truly paid the price of independence.