Is Ghana An Unsafe Place For Tourists And Ghanaians?

-An indictment on NPPs weak security policy!

?Verdens Gang? the largest circulating newspaper in Norway, 21.01.2008 edition reports the brutal attack on a passenger bus by armed robbers on the Wenchi-Wa road in the Upper west region where many people lost their lives.

According to the paper, a young Norwegian woman who was on board the bus became unconscious and was later treated in a hospital for multiple fracture and wounds. The young lady recounts an incident where armed men blocked the bus on which they were travelling with stones and then later forced the bus out of the road. This caused the death of about five people and many others injured. The paper writes that she regained consciousness to find armed men around, first she thought they were soldiers who had arrived on the scene to offer assistance but realised clearly that she was mistaken as the armed men neither considered the dead nor the injured but were interested only in robbing the travellers.

Skadet og ranet i Ghana

XXX XXX (21) fra XXXX ble hardt skadet da bussen hun satt i veltet i Ghana. ?rsaken til velten var at ranere hadde lagt store steiner i vegen. Fem av hennes medpassasjerer ble drept i ulykka.(07.01.2008) (Eidsvoll Ullensaker Blad 07.01.2008 kl. 06:16) Les saken >

Earlier on, a similar story had been carried in another newspaper concerning a Norwegian who had been robbed in Accra as the momentum gathered for the African cup of nations, and Such stories now abound in Ghana.

I travelled to Ghana in December for a short visit, where I personally became a victim for thieves in my own house! They came in the night, but realising the difficulty in entering the building due to bugler-proofs they broke some parts of the window and used certain devices to take out my belongings. Many neighbours congratulated me the following morning for coming out safe and unscathed. They told me that in some cases robbers besieged an area for more than an hour, and the police arrived only after they had finished and left so people are now very afraid.

There are stories of people from neighbouring countries now dominating the robbery market and Ghanaians are gripped with fear now contrary to the NPP and Nana Akufo-Addo`s notorious claim of successes.

These stories and the fact that Ghana is now noted to be a notorious transit point for criminal cocaine traffickers, the fact that a senior party member of the ruling NPP government is struggling behind bars in the United States makes us wonder what the NPPs talk of dignity, success and security for Ghanaians is all about.

The top brass of the Ghana Police Service has recently come out virtually untouched in drug investigations normally shrouded with question marks. I call on all who have suffered robbery and crime, and all Ghanaians who are now gripped with fear to make their voices felt in this year?s election through the ballot box! It is time to kick the imposters out and give a new mandate to a new party. This is the only way we can win our freedom, our security and our right for justice back.

Robbery in Ghana started with the NDC with some ritual murders here and there; Jerry Rawlings government could not put an end to it so we voted into power the NPP government. It is now election year and they have not delivered on that score which they promised us, thereby giving us just grounds to kick them as well out of office.

We should grant the CPP a chance to bring back Ghanaians to the hay-days where the Gold Coast and then Ghana was almost a paradise, where the police served with all their hearts and where law and order ruled.

Dr. Nkrumah set a record by creating jobs for the jobless so that there was a kind of content amongst our people and not many took to robbery as a means of earning a living.

We cannot allow the same politicians and same people to be doing the same things over and over that keeps jeopardising our national security and welfare! They are short of ideas in as far as national security is concerned. Why else was the national security minister fired recently and why now, who will replace him and what are his plans? I can bet the new man has no plans credible enough to win our votes!

Let us not allow the NPP nor for that sake the NDC to take our votes for granted, simply because they hail from our villages and tribes rather, let?s scrutinise them, chose and abandon them and then they will learn to respect and take care of our interests.

A government that believes in making a few people rich so these few can take care of jobs for the masses is only bound to create losers in our society and country. This is a conservative capitalist ideology which puts big business first and under shady deals, instead of prioritising the common man in the streets. That is why we go looking for big businessmen from China to come and build stadiums and houses for us and for him to make his money. The Chinaman however prefers to employ Chinese prisoners than Ghanaians. What about giving loans to party cronies so they can import Nigerian films to fill our markets, how does that create jobs?

Contrary to this position, which the NPP stands for, there is an ideology which believes that strengthening the people through the institutions that make them earn their living and pride like the school system, the health system, job creation for the provision of basic needs, sanitation and basic infrastructure can make the common man capable of being called descent as he can stand on his feet. Any business established in such a society will flourish since there is a vibrant populace with the know-how and with money in their pockets to buy any products. This is politics for the common man and welfare for the veranda boys, a social democratic principle and an ideal which the CPP stands for! This was what Dr Nkrumah stood for.

That is why I firmly believe that Dr. Nduom and the CPP deserves a chance this time around. When people have jobs and where the institutions are strong the police will carry out its duties and not many people will be recruited into criminal activities. Dr Nduom has stated that;

?I believe that we Ghanaians CAN continuously create wealth to improve the worth and welfare of our people. We CAN together, seek to build a society of disciplined individuals with a passion for excellence. We can raise the average income of its citizens to $10,000 in our lifetime. This will happen if we focus on doing things differently. Our success will also be predicated on doing different things than we have done in the past. Our immediate focus should be to ensure that all our people have access to the basic necessities of life? But it is the ideology his party the CPP stands for through practice and experience in the past and what he preaches now that makes him more credible than any other candidate and worth trying.

Let?s keep trying until we find the best party suited for our needs starting from the CPP.

The NDC and the NPP have had their turns. They have both failed us, and if we the voters are principled they will only re-taste power when they have learned their lessons well enough to be aloud our mandate to start a new term. The CPP believes in a level playing field for all and in a descent and peaceful atmosphere, and until the philosophy that holds a certain group of few people favoured and made to be depended upon by the masses is thrown into the trash and abandoned, Ghana will struggle to find peace for its citizens. Our country must learn to chose parties who best can take care of every citizen even as we try to find our rough developmental paths.

Long Live the Ghanaian Dream by Dr. Nkrumah and God bless our homeland Ghana.