Nothing breaks my old heart, more than hearing disillusioned young people in Ghana, saying that they will never vote in any election again - because all politicians and political parties are the same: and that nothing in their personal circumstances ever changes, no matter which political party comes to power after an election.
Yet, nothing could be more counter-productive and inimical to the well-being of the younger generation, than holding such a negative viewpoint.
It is precisely because their personal circumstance don't see much improvement after governments change following presidential and parliamentary elections, that young Ghanaians ought to endeavour to influence the politics of our nation.
For example, by using mobile broadband, they can deploy laptops and also take advantage of smartphone capabilities, to ensure the integrity of the next presidential and parliamentary elections in December 2012.
Dedicated teams of young people across Ghana, who put love of country above tribe and party, using laptops and smartphones, can work with the dynamic, good-value-providing American short text messaging service (SMS) company, MobilizeUs (which one gathers might soon be offering its services to Ghanaians, incidentally!), and the American youth activist group with a global footprint, AVAAZ, to make the all-important December 2012 poll, the laptop, smartphone, YouTube, SMS, MMS and email election - and set a trailblazing example for the rest of Africa.
By instantaneously disseminating information about polling station activities, including results, and video-recording election centre activities nationwide, they can stop the power-hungry and the power-mad extremists in the two major political parties in Ghana, from election rigging nationwide.
That will ensure that the disgraceful actions to steal the vote in parts of the Ashanti, Eastern and Volta regions of Ghana that occurred in December 2008, are prevented from occurring in December 2012 - as text message and audio-visual evidence of all polling station activities will be sent by SMS, MMS, as well as videos posted on YouTube and elsewhere online, to shame political parties into preventing party extremists from plunging our country into chaos, during and after those elections.
And Ghana's young generation indeed do have the numbers, to make their influence felt, in our national life - if they put love of country above all else, and don't allow those passe politicians who have nothing to offer the ordinary people of Ghana, to divide them along tribal lines: in order to win elections and hold on to political power.
Politicians who take refuge in tribalism do so to play on such base sentiments, just to enable them continue to rule Ghana when they lose the trust of ordinary people.
As a class, our ruling elites are only a tiny proportion, of Ghana's total population - and can be defeated easily if ordinary people are wise enough not to fall for the tribal-card when it is resorted to by brain-dead politicians and effete political parties (just to lull ordinary people into sleep, as it were).
Ghana's younger generation need to help change the nature of our political world - by making totally irrelevant, the type of politician or political party, that never deals with issues that are relevant to the lives of ordinary Ghanaians.
The younger generation must see through all the empty barrels making such a ghastly din in the Ghanaian political world - who prefer to engage in shouting matches instead of dwelling on pertinent issues and offering creative solutions to Ghana's myriad of problems.
Such politicians, who are bankrupt of ideas, rather prefer exchanging abuse with each other and making asinine and irritating comments - to having a civilised debate about policies that will make our nation prosperous and improve the quality of the lives of ordinary people.
Ghana's young generation must seek to change the politics of their country, by shunning politicians or political parties that know perfectly well that in a globalised 21st century Africa, which is now on the cusp of an ICT revolution, tribe is irrelevant - yet constantly harp on ethnicity: because in the past it has been a convenient and effective building block in their lets-divide-the-have-not-majority-and-take-turns-to-rule-Ghana-permanently strategy of winning elections in Ghana.
What clued-on young person today, does not know that Ghana is divided not along tribal lines, but into two nations: the Ogyakrom Ghana of the majority "Moborowaa" have-nots, ruthlessly exploited and controlled by the tiny proportion of the population who are the well-connected "Atiyiee" haves - the ruling elites who dominate Ghanaian society and call the shots in our national life?
And is it not an open secret that far from seeking power to improve the lot of ordinary folk, the real agenda of some of the most powerful members of our ruling elites is to end up owning virtually all the resources of our homeland Ghana?
Do such politicians not abuse the power entrusted to them to serve ordinary people honestly - by using their period in office to exploit our national economy for themselves, the members of their family clans, and their favourite crony-capitalists: who front for them in the Great-rip-off, of Mother Ghana?
The time has come for Ghana's young generation to take an active interest in bringing about a new society that is fair, open and in which the hard-working can always rise to the top from poverty - because credit is available and cheap.
It is outrageous that our nation is currently saddled with usury interest rates - an intolerable situation that persists only for "book-long" textbook theoretical reasons: as there are no sound real-world practical and commonsense reasons that that should be the case in a post-credit crunch environment, if you ask me, dear reader. But I digress!
Young people in Ghana must shun and make irrelevant, all those shameless politicians who take ordinary people for granted - and rather than telling ordinary Ghanaians how they and their political parties intend to make our country a nation full of equal opportunities, prefer instead to resort to character assassination and name-calling: in an attempt to divert ordinary people's attention from the need for politicians to debate pressing national issues.
Yet, there are pressing issues, such as the chronic lack of public-sector affordable housing. An unacceptable situation that forces most ordinary folk into the steely and vicious arm-lock of our nation's many Shylock landlords.
But as we all know, there is a crying need for politicians and political parties to tell ordinary people, precisely what concrete measures their political parties intend to take, to resolve this modern day outrage, once and for all, when they come to power - in what is supposed to be a civilised nation in 21st century Africa.
Ghana's young people must take a keen interest in politics, because it is in the political arena that all the decisions that will affect their future well-being, such as access to quality education, access to decent healthcare facilities and access to well-designed, well-built and affordable housing for all Ghanaian families and individuals, who cannot afford to buy or build their own homes, are taken.
They must force politicians and political parties to bring an end to the current situation that makes Ghana a dog-eat-dog hell-hole in which there are huge disparities in wealth - a terrible situation exacerbated by the greed-filled years of the golden age of business for the perfidious Kufuor & Co.
The younger generation certainly have the majority vote in terms of their numbers. And if they unite, they can help rid our country of incompetent politicians - who only seek power to improve their personal net worth and that of the members of their family clans.
Young Ghanaians must wake up to the perfidy of those politicians who take them for granted and think that they will always vote one way - either exclusively for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), or the Akan tribal-supremacist dominated New Patriotic Party (NPP), the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), or the Peoples National Convention (PNC): without ever once stopping to think and weighing which political party or individual politician in Ghana, is deserving of their vote, on the basis of how well they have succeeded in presenting and defending their plans for the nation, in proper and civilised debates about the issues affecting ordinary people in our homeland Ghana, during election campaign periods.
(Above all, not all Ghanaians can be moronic "My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong" myrmidon-types, whose blinkered world-view and uncritical support for them, is slowly destroying our nation's political parties, and also makes the most foolish amongst their membership, take to making completely false allegations about the sexual preferences of their political opponents, simply because some other moron on the opposite side of the political divide, chooses to insult their party leader. Imagine that, dear reader - sheer lunacy.
And, incredibly, uncouth individuals like that think that they are heroes because of their boorishness - and actually seek to lead Nkrumah's Ghana, one day, too. God give us patience. But I digress yet again!)
Ghana is doomed to end up like Nigeria eventually, if Ghana's younger generation don't take a keen interest in the politics of their country - as apathy on their part will simply lead to a situation similar to that in Nigeria, where the apathy of ordinary Nigerians led to the mushrooming of oil dollar multi-millionaires, most of who paid not a kobo in cash upfront for blocs in oilfields, but got them nonetheless, as a result of patronage and corruption.
The same thing could happen here too - and we will then see increasing numbers of the well-connected mushrooming into dollar multi-millionaires throughout the tenures of various political parties.
And whiles Ghanaians without political connections and their nation grow ever poorer, amidst great wealth from oil and natural gas revenues - the bulk of which will somehow always eventually find its way into the pockets of our ruling elites, a chosen few will accumulate wealth beyond the imagination.
Young Ghanaians are lucky that it hasn't happened under the principled and honest President Mills - but the question is: did they not hear recently, just how much money some of those who were lucky under the mostly-corrupt NPP regime of President Kufuor, made, from disposing of their stakes in blocs in our oilfields, acquired when they got their lucky-breaks under the perfidious Kufuor & Co.?
In the light of the fact that wealth, which could build a whole affordable housing estate, to house thousands of disadvantaged families, is ending up in the bank accounts of just two individual Ghanaians - who paid no cash upfront for oil blocs that should have gone to our nation, but did not - Ghana's young generation had better start taking a keen interest in the politics of their nation, today - not tomorrow: when it may be much too late for them to wield any real collective influence: and when all the wealth from the exploitation of our oil and natural gas deposits, would have gone into private pockets. A word to the wise...
Tel (powered by Tigo - the one mobile phone network in Ghana that actually works!): + 233 (0) 27 745 3109.
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