Creating Positive Orientation for Growth
By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong, Ghanadot

Orientation has become a buzzword in emerging democratic Ghana. The word, used variously by policy-makers, politicians, media practitioners, religious leaders/spiritualists, moralists, the mass media, traditionalists, and ordinary people, has become reality thresher in the face of growing disciplinary and moral challenges in Ghana’s development process. The talk of orientation indicates that Ghanaians aren’t acquainting themselves with their core environment, which is more restorative and promotes reconciliation. That’s Ghanaian are increasingly moving away from the nucleus of their norms, values and traditions in their development process as their heroes and heroines such as the legendary Okomfo Anokye, Yaa Asantewaa and Effutu ethnic group’s Kwame Gyateh Ayirebe Gyan appropriated as the foundations of the 56 ethnic groups that form Ghana.

In Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam and China, as discipline and moral rectitude become a national challenge in their progress, the elites are re-orientating their people to one of their central norms, values and traditions – Confucianism - so as to re-enhance “social order,” re-enhance “benevolence," and, generally, re-foster “proper social relations.” At the centre is education as the harbinger of national orientation. The idea is to search for Chinese, Japanese or Vietnamese soul as driver in their development progress.

Aware of increasing disciplinary challenges facing Ghana’s progress such as poor sanitation practices, growing crime, and the destructive Pull Him Down (PHD) syndrome, a deep-seated practice where Ghanaians destroy each other as they try to progress, President John Kufour added an National Orientation section to the existing Ministry of Information to tackle the social cancer. While a lot of Ghanaian opinion formers have spoken in recent times of re-orientating Ghanaians for progress, one of the most striking ones today is a Republic Day lectures at the capital of Ghana’s Volta Region, Ho. Despite their good intensions and orientation-consciousness, what was missing was a deeper Japanese or Chinese sense of orientation a la Confucianism, where Ghanaians’ norms, values and traditions, drawn from the 56 ethnic groups that form Ghana, are skillfully unearthed and weaved into the orientation process for progress.

The Ho Republic Day lecture (July 4, Ghana News Agency), organized by the Ho Polytechnic student body, part of broader targets of the national orientation strategy, saw speakers revealing the need for heightened orientation for progress. Samples: “Positive mental orientation among Ghanaians towards self-belief in tackling the challenges of national development;” "In our collective resolve to confront the challenges facing us, we should avoid inaction, indifference and silencing of the voice of justice;” “Knowledge of the sacrifices others have made as well as their motivations and mistakes were useful lessons to be learnt by the present generation to shape their role in nation building.” What is generally missing here, like most of the exhortations before, is tying these views to Ghanaians’ norms, values and traditions as the critical foundation for national orientation, as Singapore, Japan and China are doing by tying their national orientation to their Confucian values.

The missing indigenous Ghanaian values in the larger national orientation talks is as a result of an education system that is not leaned towards the values of the 56 ethnic groups that form Ghana. This pretty much is responsible for the increasing indiscipline, spiritual crises, and moral bewilderment, especially at the national level; where citizens with high Western education have either lost touch or have shaky grasp or know little about their own authentic core values and traditions. Still, the situation is not better even at the quasi-national outfit National Commission for Civic Education. Despite its mandate saying it is responsible for the education of Ghanaian citizens; it deals more or less with constitutional education and not practical civic education matters. Earlier national civic ventures, the most prominent chaired by the late Prime Minister Dr. Kofi Busia, had not done well, disturbingly failing to drawn from Ghanaian norms, values and traditions, especially working with the National House of Chiefs, as key carriers of Ghanaian values and traditions, to orientate Ghana for sustainable progress.

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong, Canada, July 5, 2007