Paul Adom Otchere sits down with Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams for a chat
Archbishop Duncan-Williams calls for leaders to provide sustainable jobs for youth
A video of Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams speaking of a time after the year 2020 when political uprisings akin to the Arab Spring from the early 2010s resurging in West Africa, has resurfaced.
In the 2019 video snippet from an extensive exclusive interview with the host of Good Evening Ghana, Paul Adom Otchere, the father of the charismatic church movement in Ghana, the Archbishop said that this could become a reality should nothing be done by governments in the sub-region to make the lives of their youth better.
“There is a wind coming, and it’s not 2019. It will begin after 2020 going. The Arab uprising is coming; it’s coming not just to Ghana, West Africa, all over if we don’t do something, if we don’t give them hope. That’s why I’m going back to the schools and I’m engaging the youth again because if you don’t give them hope and a sense of direction, the most dangerous thing in life is to fight somebody who has nothing to lose,” he said.
He added that if leaders in the region do not do anything about this situation now, it will create an environment that will make governance on the continent a big problem.
“They don’t have wives, they don’t have children, they don’t have cars, they don’t have lands, they have no hope, nothing to live for; they don’t mind dying.
“So, our politics is treading on dangerous grounds?” the host, Paul, asked.
“It is, (sic) cause I see it everywhere and it’s very scary and very worrying that…”
“Will the wind start from Ghana?”
“I don’t know but it’s coming; it’s coming to West Africa after 2020 going – 2021, 22, 3, 4 going if something don’t change to give the youth hope, I’m telling you, and I’m speaking… It will only work if our former presidents and leaders of today will come together and say hey, let’s take hold of our country, let’s do something because this party politics, as much as it’s democracy and it’s worth it, we have to do it in the context of what works with our tradition.
“And if we don’t look at it carefully, it will create an atmosphere that the countries of Africa will become very difficult to govern,” he said.
It will be recalled that in the last two years, there have been political uprisings in four West African countries: Niger, Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso.
In Ghana, the formation of the 8th Parliament of the 4th Republic, which is led by a Speaker of Parliament who is not from the ruling party, and the equal split of Members of Parliament, has so far proven how tense the House can be.
