Like Ghana, many of the the nations of the European Union (EU), are experiencing slow economic growth rates. And, aside from the high cost of living in those nations, their societies are also grappling with high youth unemployment.
And like Ghana, the austerity measures they are taking to rebalance their national economies, have led to widespread resentment that manifests itself in strikes by sundry public-sector employees - organised by European labour unions. Other civil society groupings in the EU also hold demonstrations to protest against the high cost of living from time to time - the selfsame response to the government's austerity measures that we have been witnessing in Ghana.
Under the circumstances, it is entirely understandable that the Pastor Mensah Otabils in our midst feel rather despondent, and fear that our homeland Ghana "is sinking". Well, what is actually happening, is that Ghana is being sabotaged on a massive scale by a powerful and greedy few, including vested interests that seek regime-change, in order to participate in the ongoing brutal gang-rape of Mother Ghana.Alas, they are getting away with it, as a result of pusillanimous leadership that aims to please all-comers, including even its enemies. Pity.
(Incidentally, the President has no one to blame for all the negativity swirling around his regime, but himself. If he had ignored the rogues-in-high-places in his regime, and listened to those of us who pleaded with him in our writing to put clear blue water between himself and his political opponents, by publicly publishing his assets and those of his spouse, today, he would be occupying the moral high ground in Ghanaian politics - and would have made it virtually impossible for the quislings who want to return Ghana to their neo-colonialist collaborators and paymasters yet again, to hound him so. Poor man. But I digress.)
Still, the good news, is that despite all our current difficulties, far from "sinking", Ghana actually has a very bright future ahead of it. And the Pastor Mensah Otabils do indeed also have very important roles to play in helping to turn around the national economy.
Instead of engaging in what amounts to an exercise in futility ("i.e. the blasphemy of arrogating the Almighty God's powers to themselves at every church service" - to quote an old acquaintance of mine - "giving bombastic sermons" in which they "command" the fall of the Ghana cedi to be "arrested"), the billionaire founder-pastors of Ghana's super-rich, mega-churches should rather focus on character-building, and make their flock clearly understand the importance of born-again Christians treasuring personal integrity above all else: if they want to book a place in heaven.
Alas, the obsession of so many of our nation's super-rich pastors, with sermons that focus on unrelenting materialism to the exclusion of virtually everything else, is a major contributory factor to the miasma that the prevailing dog-eat-dog culture in today's Ghana represents. Indeed, there are many who believe that the unfathomable greed, which underpins their gospel-of-prosperity, actually fuels the unprecedented selfishness that is at the very heart of the widespread corruption in Ghana.
However, there is good news to be had in evangelical Christendom in Ghana: There actually is something very positive that the Pastor Mensah Otabils in our homeland Ghana can do to help turn Ghana's fortunes around. In addition to demanding that our leaders and their spouses publicly publish their assets, they can also appeal to our ruling elites to create a low-carbon green economy that will create wealth and generate thousands of jobs in rural Ghana - and lead to an era of cheap and abundant renewable power in Ghana, which will underpin the transformation of Ghanaian society.
The Pastor Mensah Otabils must impress upon our hard-of-hearing ruling elites to build new biomass power plants, and convert the existing ones to use wood pellets as feedstock. That will guarantee Ghana power that is even cheaper than that produced by coal-fired power plants, which cause such egregious air pollution around the globe. We could even become the biggest exporters of cheap power from renewable sources in west Africa.
And it will also create a virtuous supply-chain in which agro-forestry plantations of fast-growing trees provide the raw material for rural wood pellet factories that will produce feedstock for renewable power plants across the country.
It will also mean that we will finally be able to find a creative way to utilise all the land poisoned by illegal gold mining across a vast swathe of the Ghanaian countryside. Pretty good news, that. Ditto utilise marginal land across the country that cannot be used to produce food for the same purpose.
As it happens, luckily for us, there is enough long-term capital parked in pension funds in Ghana, which are looking for such solid revenue-generating projects to invest in.
And if the district assemblies and traditional rulers in the northern part of Ghana collaborate with Anne Rath, the CEO of NexSteppe - the U.S. start-up from California, which has used conventional plant breeding techniques to develop heat and drought resistant sorghum plants that grow on marginal land to a height of some 20ft, and are specifically bred to produce high-energy sorghum biofuels from, for the use of cars, buses, trucks and power plants - they can successfully replicate NexSteppe's U.S. sorghum biofuels business model's success across northern Ghana too.
Surely, such innovative agricultural-sector projects will guarantee prosperity throughout rural Ghana, and help keep inflation in check in urban Ghana, because supplying the transport sector with biofuels produced from sorghum, will always be far more cost effective for the nation than supplying the transport sector with fuel produced from onshore and offshore hydrocarbon sources, will they not?
(We will also then finally free Ghana from the clutches of the greedy and sly so-called bulk oil distributing companies, for which private risk has been socialised. Having been given a license to literally print money (even though they apparently lack the wherewithal and the requisite infrastructure), they now regularly hold our nation's economy to ransom: using a business model that amounts to resorting to blackmailing governments of the day, through their lackeys in the media, to extort money from the national treasury. Yet those arch crony-capitalists knew exactly what they were taking on, when they lobbied for the opportunity to rip-off Mother Ghana in such systematic fashion. But I digress, yet again.)
We can also build factories in the coconut-growing areas of Ghana, to produce valuable binderless ecoboards from coir-fibre, for local markets and for export to the green building-supplies trade's bulk purchasers in Europe, the U.S.A., the UK, Canada and elsewhere in the developed world.
Ecoboards made from coconut fibre - which are structurally stronger than traditional boards - can replace conventional boards (bonded with adhesives) made from trees cut from our fast-depleting forests. The ecoboard supply chain will also create wealth and jobs in rural Ghana, and boost our exports too, will it not, I ask? Ghana really does have a very bright future to look forward to.
And one certainly has no doubt that the Pastor Mensah Otabils in our midst are capable of convincing our ruling elites to embark on this green, low-carbon journey to prosperity - that can eventually turn around our nation's fortunes, and create a sustainable development model for rural Ghana, which redounds to the benefit of all Ghanaians.
By so doing the Pastor Mensah Otabils in our country will help bring prosperity to Ghana. That is a far more worthwhile and inspiring way to proceed, than the never-ending doom-and-gloom narrative that so dispirits the young-impressionable and the gullible-ignorant. Ghana is not "sinking" - and God willing, never will: No matter how "heavy" the hearts of some Ghanaian pastors might feel inside the bodies of their super-sensitive owners at any given point in time.
Finally, one hopes that the Pastor Mensah Otabils in our midst, will seek direction from God Almighty, when they next commune with him (as they frequently do: being such pious gentlemen) - so that they can find the strength to continue contributing positively to the nation-building effort in their own unique ways. That is the best way they can get direction to enable them help Ghana to prosper. A word to the wise...
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