No matter the circumstances into which every Ghanaian is
born, he or she is born with greatness locked within him or her. It takes
divine intervention and a sequence of events and circumstances to unlock the
greatness from an individual. And anytime greatness is unlocked from an
individual, our nation Ghana benefits.
Anytime I drive around my dear country Ghana, I look into
the faces of the individuals I come across and wonder what greatness is locked
within them. And I reflect on how far down the development path Ghana would
have come, if we had been able to unlock even 10% of the greatness locked
within Ghanaians.
Arguably one of the most influential Ghanaians ever born,
Kwame Nkrumah started out as just another Ghanaian village kid. He was born in
Nkroful, an obscure corner of Ghana. I use the word obscure because in the
scheme of things in Ghana right now, Nkroful simply does not feature. There are
so many people and kids in places like Nkroful, scattered throughout Ghana, who
are living from hand to mouth, but each with potential nation changing
greatness locked within them.
The thrust of this article basically is that the British
colonialists assumed that each native ( as they referred to us ) had some
value. Thus the system and framework they put in place, was geared towards
unlocking the value in each individual
and allowing it to develop within the individual. This value or greatness as I
call it, eventually had a positive multiplier effect on the nation, especially when the individual
became an adult.
The system put in place by the British, unlocked the
potential and value in Kwame Nkrumah and enabled him to become the top student
in his class. Kwame now baptized as Francis, was made a Pupil Teacher. In 1926,
an Educationist Reverend A.G Fraser, impressed with Kwame Francis, recommended
that he should go for further studies at the Accra Government Training College.
In 1928, Kwame Francis moved, to Prince
of Wales College now Achimota School. Eventually he found his way to Lincoln
University in the US and the rest is history.
Today, a century and millennium succeeding Nkrumah’s, does
our Ghanaian system place an intrinsic value, on each and every Ghanaian. I
don’t think so. I ask myself, how easy would it be, for any kid from Nkroful or
my beloved Breman Asikuma, to make it through our educational system and
eventually develop his or herself to the point where he or she can contribute
to our country’s development?
If Kwame Nkrumah had been born in our times, there is a 80% probability
that he would have ended up selling dog chains and Wrigley’s Chewing gum at a
traffic light in Accra. We would have
been clamouring for them to be swept off the streets and back to the
hinterland.
I have always wondered why so many Ghanaians don’t make it
in Ghana but succeed the moment they leave our shores. Surely there must be
something about Ghana that prevents them from realizing their full potential.
Or conversely something about “abroad” that realizes the value in the
individual and brings out the best in them. We have Ghanaians in the UN,
NASA,Wall Street and the Square Mile to name a few. It is temptingly simplistic
to assume that the more favourable economic circumstances prevailing out there is the reason for their success.
But this is not the case. I will attempt to explain why next week.
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