Recently social media reported that our President, H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, was booed at by some youth during his speech at an international event at the Independence Square.
In my opinion, this is very sad, but worse of all, it may be a signal that the youth are planning something that will not help this country.
There could be some incitement within a section of the youth which is taking advantage of the current economic crunch. Those behind this may be hoping for a youth uprising, like the Arab Spring, to take over the country.
A kind of revolution, that cannot be stopped by the security agents, a revolution that will put the inexperienced youth in charge of affairs.
This is where the danger lies. Results of such uprisings have never and will never redeem this country. Ghana would rather go backwards into the Stone Age.
I am not in anyway saying that no youth, can lead this country. In Ghana, youth is defined as someone not more than the age of 35 years.
My concern is that, a youth had led this country before, through violent means and in my opinion the results are the source of the hardships we are facing, today.
Prior to June 4, 1979, even though Ghana was going through some challenges, we had a buoyant economy with Ghanaian owned businesses, thriving all over the place.
There was the Ghana Industrial Holding Corporation (GIHOC) which had over sixteen industries under it and even though it was state owned, it turned out very efficient, producing goods that were patronised, both home and abroad.
The country was going through a peaceful transition from military to constitutional rule when on June 4, the youth in the Ghana Armed Forces, struck.
Led by Jerry John Rawlings who was then thirty-two years, they effectively grounded the nation to a halt. They went after owners of Ghanaian businesses and chased them out of town, confiscating their businesses to the state.
These businesses were poorly managed by the youth who were put in charge. When they collapsed, Rawlings did not have the common sense to return them to their rightful owners but sold them to foreign owned investors, who brought them back to life.
They then transferred huge amounts of money as profits made to the mother-companies abroad. This is one of the reasons why the cedi is suffering under the dollar.
Rawlings in his youthful age, decreed that all those who evaded taxes must, for their own interest pay them into an account that did not belong to any state revenue office. Today there is no record as to what happened to the monies.
Rawlings as a youth,together with his colleagues, decided that every Ghanaian aged forty years and above must be killed so that Ghana can starts with only the youth, because the adults were our problem.Gladly, this never happened.
He ordered the demolition of a market, completely unaware that it is the market forces that drive the economy.In his attempts to fight corruption, Rawlings had market women stripped naked and made to expose their dignities to the public. This is how far the youth went.
In 1982, at age thirty-five, and still a youth, Rawlings mandated that all ¢50.00 notes were to be demonetised and everyone who possessed any, should deposit them in the banks.The ¢50.00 note, according to him was one of the reasons for corruption in Ghana. At the appropriate time, the money would be returned to the owners, he promised. Up to the day he died in 2020, thirty-eight years after, no refund had been made.
It is being speculated that the account number to which the ¢50.00 notes were finally deposited into belonged to Rawlings, since Bank of Ghana has no records of this.
The youthful Rawlings promised the poor a better living and came out with the theory of enriching the poor by impoverishing the rich from the Political Theory of Organised Chaos. Yet, only a few of poor made it. And these were those who sang and danced to his command.
The poorer became much poorer while Rawlings, who used to beg for food, rose to become among the richest in Africa. Only a few benefited from the Rawlings experiment.
Would Zanator Rawlings have become a medical doctor if her father had not gate-crashed into the political scene or would she have become a community health nurse?
How many Ghanaians lost the opportunity of making it tops in life because of youthful Rawlings? What would Ghana have become if youthful Rawlings had not struck? At the end of his nineteen uninterrupted years, he took Ghana from a prosperous nation to a highly indebted poor one. He rather worsened our situation.
Forty years on, the eight senior army officers he had, killed were in truth not corrupt after all, but to Rawlings, they were provocative and innocent. They had to die to save the lives of over eighty corrupt Ghanaians. Rawlings made this confession before he died. He promoted social and managerial indiscipline.
Is this what we want again? Have we not learnt lessons? Must we push Ghana further into the Stone Age?
It is time we find ways of meeting the demands of the youth, moulding them into responsible citizens, while they understudy how to govern this country.
Hon Daniel Dugan
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s stance.
