Accra, Feb. 15, - Mr Ace Anan
Ankomah, Ghana’s ace legal practitioner, has condemned the wilful disrespect of
the laws of the land, saying State institutions and individuals mandated to
enforce them and punish offenders rather connived to wreck the nation.
Mr Ankomah warned that Ghana
would continue to lag in development if citizens failed to change their
attitudes for the better.
The leading member of the
pressure Group, Occupy Ghana, was the Guest Speaker at the Third Annual Public
Lecture of the Rotary Club of Accra-West, on the topic, “Ghana: Caught between
the Missing Link and the Trigger”, in Accra, on Wednesday.
The event formed part of
activities, dedicated to promoting peace and conflict resolution, to mark the
birth of the Rotary Club.
The Club, therefore, decided to
use the Valentine’s Day, which is celebrated as the National Chocolate Day in
Ghana to discuss critical topics of national importance.
He said: “We have failed as a
nation because we do not insist on the right thing being done; the system has
been set up for us to fail.”
The legal luminary chastised the
law enforcement agencies for failing to enforce the law, noting that, when
motorists jumped red lights, many traffic police officers took bribes and
allowed them to go scot free, instead of arresting them, thus the impunity
continued.
“Look at the way motorcyclists
ride in Accra; though there are road traffic regulations and usually traffic police officers at the traffic
lights, the motorcyclists jump the red light and just go away,” he said.
Mr Ankomah said Ghanaians
collapsed the Ghana Airways because of mismanagement as the operators of the
Airline at the time, carried the luggage of their family members and close
associates without paying for them.
“Then after collapsing the
airline, we call a national prayer meeting, it’s a joke! Did God fail Ghana or
we failed ourselves?” he queried.
He said some Ghanaians had mixed
superstition with religion and spent useful hours at prayer camps without
making any efforts to find jobs and, thus expected manna to fall from heaven.
“He who does not work should not
eat,” he made reference to the bible.
Mr. Ankomah said Ghana had
designated productive days as national holidays, including the Africa Union
Day, when Africa needed more work than rest.
Why is the AU Day not marked as a
holiday in South Africa or even Ethiopia, where the AU’s headquarters is
located”?
He said the nation had been
endowed with many natural resources but its citizens had failed to add value to
them to maximise the benefits.
Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire produced
70 per cent of the world’s cocoa beans, but unfortunately, Africa, he said,
received only three per cent of the $100 billion dollar-chocolate business
value chain worldwide
Mr Ankomah noted that Ghana had
mined gold ore for more than 100 years, but mining had not made the needed
impact on the lives of the local people, saying, “We cannot boast of any
developed city like Johannesburg because we failed as a nation to add value to
resource.”
There was chronic lateness among
Ghanaians, he stated, and sarcastically remarked, “Apparently, the later you
are to an event, the more important you are”.
“Therefore, it has become normal
for guest speakers to attend events late, as it were, when you attend an event
on time, you’ll wait… and…wait… and… wait, and when the guest speaker arrives,
we all cheer him up”.
In Ghana, he observed, “When you
invite someone to a programme, and ask what time he would arrive, he will tell
you at ‘3:00 to 3:30 or 4:00”’.
Mr. Emmanuel Quarshie, the
President of the Rotary Club of Accra-West, earlier in his welcome address,
said the Club chose the Valentine’s Day, which, was dedicated to promote love,
to discuss those issues that would inure to the benefit of the nation.
GNA
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