“When two elephants fight, the grass suffers.” That is what the good old African proverb says and that is exactly the fate of the future leaders of this country at the moment. It has been over two weeks now since lecturers in the various public universities embarked on a strike. Each morning we wake in our various halls and hostels with the hope of hearing good news of our lecturers returning for lectures but the leaders of various parties involved in this labor tussle keep dashing our hope with the kind of submission they make on our radio stations. There seem to be no empathy on the various sides of the divide and everybody is trying to make the people belief that they are doing the right thing and this has resulted in this to and fro tussle that is making the poor student suffer.
Today’s world is a very competitive one and the young people in the so called third world countries like ours are competing for the limited space and opportunities available in the global village with young people from countries where a lot of resources are devoted to the training of young people in order to position them well in the global system. Despite the scanty resources our leaders allocate for the training and development of young people of this country, some young men and women have strived against all odds to place themselves and Ghana on the map.
As our lecturers continue with their strike action and we sit in our various halls and hostels trying to make the best out of the days that are being made to go waste by the actions and inactions of our leaders, there are young men and women who are vigorously being trained and developed all over the world whom we are expected to compete with in the near future. While leaders of countries all over the world are making the development of their youth a priority; our leaders here in Ghana are blowing away huge amounts of money on cosmetic projects that will keep us marking time as a country for a very long time to come.
We have been quite all this while as our future is being put on the line by our leaders. But we are counting the days and hoping that the issues will be resolved before we hit the 21st day of the strike which will automatically mean that this semester will become useless. We will continue to suffer once the grass and the elephants continue to fight but at this moment I want ask the elephants stop their unproductive tussle and take a look at what they are doing to grass.
At the moment the youth looks powerless in the sight of our leaders as they continue to experiment with our future but I want our leaders to remember what Egypt has been reduced to because of the failure of leaders to cater for the needs of the youth. As the youth continue to linger in their perceived state of powerlessness, I want our leaders to ponder over the words of Professor Ali Mazrui who once said that just as he agrees with Lord Acton that absolute power corrupts absolutely so does he also belief that absolute powerlessness also corrupts and leads to ACTS OF DESPERATION.
KENNETH NII YEBOAH
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