We Must Not Allow Incompetent Individuals To Ruin Ghana

I flew into a rage a few days ago, when I noticed that an article of mine - entitled "Judges In Ghana Do Not Pose A Threat To Free Speech" - which  I emailed  to a Ghanaian newspaper,  had been mutilated,  and words and sentences that weren't mine, had somehow found their way into the article.

To paraphrase an old friend,  to whom  I pointed out the mangled  article in the said newspaper, the genius who took the literary equivalent of a carving knife to  an article that literally had nothing wrong with it,  to begin with, had   succeeded in turning  that  simple piece   into a typical example,  of  the sort of pedestrian and mediocre fare,   one comes across  daily,  in so many of our nation's newspapers. Alas, such is life in our homeland Ghana.


In the calming presence of my old friend, I  came to the conclusion that sending the article to the said newspaper,   was most unwise of me. What did I expect in a nation in which so many pay obeisance to  the gods of the cult-of-the-mediocre?


In a  sense, it was really not  the fault of the  poor chap who 'edited' my submitted piece. Is this not a nation in which for most of  our educated urban elites, speaking pidgin English  is the height of fashion,  and regarded as being frightfully cool?


The question is: as a nation, how have we ended up with so many poorly-educated individuals,  with university degrees - each one of whom   competes with other  young university graduates,  from other parts of our digital global village:   who invariably  are far  better educated than their Ghanaian counterparts?


Little wonder then,   that  when one surveys  the   world of Ghanaian journalism, what stares one in the face,  is an unedifying  landscape of unethical and unprofessional conduct; a barren patch of earth  peopled mostly  by mediocre and incompetent individuals,  many of  who have failed to master even  the  basic tool of their profession, the English language.


Yet,  there are some media-types in this country,  whose  arrogance has made  them opt to be part of that small  army of super-ruthless  individuals, who daily joust for influence,  in their quest for political power.


On a daily basis, they fight  brutal  verbal battles,  on the airwaves of television and FM radio  stations -  in the never-ending propaganda war between the two major political parties in Ghana.


And that is the  unimpressive professional background, of  some of  those  newspaper publishers and editors,  who regularly  put the peace and stability of Ghana at risk.


No one should celebrate such short-sighted individuals as heroes. Their lack of wisdom and  foolhardiness could tip our country over the precipice one day.


The tragedy for our country, is that such incompetent individuals can toy with the destiny of tens of millions of ordinary people in Ghana -  for  many of whom life is a daily  struggle to  survive in a harsh economic climate.


It is said that when good people refuse to  take an interest in the governance of their country, evil triumphs in it.


To save their country from  being destroyed by incompetent individuals,  Ghana's silent majority of discerning and patriotic citizens,  should stop  sitting  on the fence.


It is time they   rose against the   vociferous and reckless incompetents, who daily put the stability of our nation at risk -  and took action  to stop those  dangerous and arrogant nation-wreckers from  destroying  Ghana:  in the name of party politics. A word to the wise...


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