This morning, I stood by my house watching gallons of treated water gush onto the street from a burst pipe in my neighborhood. It wasn’t a small leak; it was a torrent, washing away the road surface and wasting a resource that many in this country pray for daily.
What struck me wasn’t just the mechanical failure, but the human one. Neighbors walked by it. Cars drove around it. People who lived ten meters away went about their morning routines, indifferent. I had to be the one to pick up the phone and call the Ghana Water Company. That burst pipe is Ghana. It is a metaphor for a nation that sees the rot, smells the decay, but waits for “someone else” to fix it.
We wake up every day to headlines that should spark a revolution of conscience, yet we treat them as mere entertainment. We debate them on morning radio shows, our experts proffer high-sounding technical solutions, and then, like a pendulum swinging back to rest, we revert to our “default settings.” We live in the moment, outraged for twenty-four hours, and then we go back to sleep. This cycle of momentary anger followed by permanent apathy is not just a political failure; it is a failure of our national soul. It reveals a fundamental deficit in our upbringing: the total collapse of Responsibility and Accountability.
The Symptoms: A Catalogue of National Neglect
To understand the severity of this crisis, one only needs to look at the sequence of events in the past and in recent times. The symptoms of our malaise are everywhere.
Take the E-blocks. About a year ago, I stood before the skeleton of a technical school near the Community 22 military base in Ashaiman. This four-storey structure, initiated under former President John Dramani Mahama, was meant to educate the next generation. Instead, it stands rotting- a monument to the discontinuity of governance and the waste of taxpayer money. If we had a culture of accountability, no administration would dare let public funds rot simply because the project was started by a predecessor.
Then there is the institutional rot. Dr. Randy Abbey recently exposed a “rollover” scandal at COCOBOD involving over 333,767 tonnes of cocoa. In a country where farmers are crying over delayed payments, such opacity is criminal. Yet, the institution saw no need to investigate until the public outcry over price reductions forced its hand.
Similarly, we watched the finance minister and his Deputy, Thomas Nyarko Ampem, visibly frustrated by the corruption at the GRA and CEPS officers colluding to help smugglers evade taxes. These are not just “corrupt acts”; they are acts of treason against the economy, born from a lack of personal responsibility toward the state.
We see it in our social fabric. The recent viral videos of a Russian national recording sexual encounters with Ghanaian women sparked a gender war. But lost in the noise of victim-blaming was a harder truth about self-responsibility. We have raised a generation so enamored with fleeting validation or material gain that the instinct for self-preservation and dignity is eroding.
We see it in security. When terrorists ambushed a truck in Titao, Burkina Faso, killing seven Ghanaian tomato traders on February 14, the response shouldn’t have been political point-scoring. It should have been a unified national grief and a strategic review of trade route security. But accountability was lost to politics.
And finally, the most heartbreaking of all: the death of Charles Amissah. A hit-and-run victim denied care at three major hospitals, dying in an ambulance because of the “no-bed syndrome.” The Management of Korle Bu has interdicted staff, but this is reactive. The system failed Charles long before he arrived at the hospital gates.
The Diagnosis: The Failure of Socialisation
We cannot legislate our way out of this because the problem is not a lack of laws; it is a lack of values. The fundamental problem is that our agents of socialization- the Family, the School, Religion, and the Media- have failed to instill the twin virtues of responsibility (the internal drive to do the right thing) and accountability (the willingness to accept the consequences of one’s actions).
- The Family: The Cradle of Entitlement
The Ghanaian home is no longer the training ground fr character. In our bid to give our children “the life we didn’t have,” we have shielded them from the consequences of their actions.
Today, a child insults an elder or destroys property, and the parent defends them, attacking the accuser instead of correcting the child. Wealthy parents are seen bribing their way out of trouble when their children break traffic laws or school rules, teaching the child that money supersedes responsibility. As if that isn’t enough, we see the delegation of parenting to house-helps. So, children grow up seeing “serving” as beneath them, leading to adults who cannot take care of their own environment (hence the burst pipe apathy).
2. The School: The Factory of Rote Learning
Our schools produce graduates who are smart but not responsible. And the Cheating Culture (“Apor”) system is an open secret. When students pay for leaked questions and schools facilitate it to maintain “rankings,” we are teaching them that the end justifies the corrupt means.
Again, student leaders often view their roles as a license to bully juniors or skip chores, rather than a responsibility to serve the student body. We have also removed practical civic education. Students now do not clean their classrooms anymore; parents pay fees for cleaners. They leave school believing that keeping their environment clean is someone else’s job.
3. Religion: The “Sky God” Syndrome
Religion in Ghana has become a narcotic that numbs us to responsibility. Pastors preach that “Grace” will cover your mistakes. If a student doesn’t study but prays, they expect to pass. If a driver speeds but has a rosary on the mirror, they expect safety. This creates a fatalistic society where we blame the devil for our negligence.
In fact, the prosperity gospel teaches that success is a sign of God’s favor, regardless of the source of wealth. A drug dealer or a corrupt official who pays tithes is honored in the front row, while the honest teacher is ignored.
This destroys the incentive for honest accountability.And when people die in vehicular accidents as a result of our bad roads or at hospitals with no beds, Members of Parliament say, “It is well.” We say, “Allah knows best.” We attribute systemic failure to divine will, absolving humans of the duty to fix it.
4. The Media: The Amplifier of Irresponsibility
We give prime-time slots to individuals who have no track record of integrity, simply because they are loud or rich. In cases where the media report scandals, they rarely follow the cases to their conclusion 3 years later to see if justice was served. This tells the corrupt: “Just wait it out, the noise will stop.”
Again, the media prioritises sensationalism over substance. In the case of the Russian video, the media focused on the salacious details rather than a constructive conversation about privacy, consent, and personal caution.
Superficial Solutions vs. Root Causes
In the wake of Charles Amissah’s death, the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, has called for an Emergency Care Law, just like we also see experts advocating for prosecutorial legislation. While well-intentioned, this is a superficial solution to a deep-seated rot in our hospitals.
We are a country obsessed with passing laws to fix character defects. We already have the Criminal Offences Act, which criminalizes manslaughter and recklessness. We have the Law of Torts, where the principle of Donoghue v Stevenson clearly establishes a duty of care. If a doctor turns away a dying patient, that is already gross negligence. It is already a breach of their Hippocratic oath. It is potentially torturous and in some cases criminal.
So, my question remains: Why did the existing laws not save Charles? Because a law is only as good as the conscience of the person applying it. If the nurse at the reception lacks the innate sense of responsibility to say, “I cannot let this man die on my watch, even if I have to treat him on the floor,” no Act of Parliament will change that. We are trying to use legal bandages to cure a cancer of the soul.
This flaw in our approach is even more evident in our fight against corruption- one of the greatest existential threats facing our country and the world. We are perpetually fixated on prosecutorial solutions; we wait for the theft to happen, then we scramble to prosecute the offender. But prosecution is reactive; it is not a cure. The lasting solution lies in prevention, which can only be achieved by instilling the virtues of accountability, responsibility, and conscience-building at the formative stages of child grooming.
Until we strike a critical balance between the gavel of the courtroom and the grooming of men and women of conscience, our progress will be painfully slow. Legislation or laws alone cannot save the country. We must recognise that building a nation of conscience- a people deliberate about their future and united in the mind to see the next generation prosper- is the only true salvation.
The Cure: The Formative Shift
The solution lies in a “Mental Revolution” that begins at the formative stages of life. We must groom a new Ghanaian.
Re-engineering the Family Unit:
Parents must return to the concept of “tough love.” If a child breaks a toy, they must be cautioned or earn the money to replace it. If they fail a test, they must own the failure, not blame the teacher. We must teach children that actions have consequences.
Let children volunteer. Let them see suffering. When they understand that their comfort is a privilege, they develop empathy.
Educational Reform for Character:
Schools must grade “Character” with the same weight as “Mathematics.” Reintroduce community service as a prerequisite for graduation. If a student destroys school property, they fix it. Not their parents- them. We must teach them that the E-block in Ashaiman is theirs, paid for by their future taxes, so they must be angry when it rots.
Theological recalibration:
Religious bodies must preach the “Theology of Responsibility.” They must let the followers understand that God blesses the work of your hands, not the idleness of your hands. The church and mosque must be used to shame corruption, not sanitise it.
The Benefit: A Nation That Works
Imagine a Ghana where this sense of responsibility is innate. If the Customs officer at the border had been raised to believe that “stealing from the state is stealing from my own children,” he would not collude with smugglers. The finance minister wouldn’t need to shout; the revenue would flow, and we wouldn’t need the IMF.
If the young women in the videos had been raised with a deep sense of self-worth and responsibility for their own safety, they might have been more circumspect, protecting their dignity.
If the neighbors near the burst pipe had a sense of community ownership, five people would have called the Water Company within ten minutes. Thousands of gallons would be saved.
And most importantly, if the staff at Korle Bu viewed Charles Amissah not as “just another case” but as a human being to whom they are accountable- not to the Ministry, but to their own conscience- they would have found a way. They would have stabilized him. He would be alive.
Ghana will not be saved by another E-Levy, another IMF bailout, or another Emergency Care Law as proposed by the Speaker of Parliament. Ghana will be saved when we stop looking for “others” to fix things and start looking in the mirror.
The rot at COCOBOD, the negligence at Korle Bu, and the apathy toward the burst pipe are all the same disease: a refusal to say, “I am responsible and accountable.” Until we raise a generation that fears the judgment of their conscience more than the judgment of a court and public, we will continue to drift, living in the moment, outraged today, and asleep tomorrow. It is time to wake up.
DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
Source: www.myjoyonline.com
