Mr Edward Boateng, the Director-General of the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA), has called for the inclusion of patriotism into Ghana’s educational curriculum.
That, he said, would promote public sacrifice and demand for accountability, which are critically needed to make the country develop to a state, comparable to other advanced countries.
“Patriotism is not something that falls from trees; we must inculcate it in our curriculum so that people would learn to respect the flag, our culture and the things that make us Ghanaian, including our food and clothing.”
Mr Boateng made the call in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on the commemoration of the country’s 66th independence anniversary.
He called for patriotism to be married with accountability to engender long-term national development.
“There are Ghanaian children who have never lived here (Ghana), but they are referred to as Ghanaian-Chinese, Ghanaian-British or Ghanaian-American, so Ghana will always be part of us.
“Having lived with Ghanaians in the US, Europe, South Africa, and China, I will say that Ghanaians are patriotic,” he said, and called for a functional system that would ensure that people who made the country lose money, particularly in the public sector were dealt with to serve as a deterrent to others.
“It is our responsibility to make sure that we hold the system and our government to task. We also must make sure that people who are put in responsibilities of trust are held accountable.”
The SIGA Director-General bemoaned the state where Ghanaians are not holding people in authority accountable for what they deliver, saying, “In China, the US and other countries, people are patriotic, yet they take advantage of the system, but they are punished when caught. The challenge is that we are not punishing those people.”
He was confident that once the Government showed more commitment in dealing with corruption by punishing those who took advantage of the system, “there will be a higher level of accountability.”
On the national development plan, Mr Boateng said most of the details in political party manifestoes were just mere words, “so, we the people must hold them accountable and demand to know how they are going to implement and fund it.”
“Democracy does not lend itself to one plan, you and I have a different plan but at the end of the day, we want to educate people, provide health, sanitation, and good infrastructure. How we are going to do it differently is where we must take the manifestoes of all our parties to the task,” he said.
Mr Boateng noted that Ghana, since the attainment of independence, had made significant gains in education, health, and other infrastructure development, despite the occasional political and economic challenges.
“At independence, the number of graduates in the country was less than a thousand. Today, we have millions of graduates. We could count the number of entrepreneurs in the country on our fingers at the time, but, today, we have many of them.”
“In all these, the most important thing is that we have freedom and peace, and we have peace,” he emphasised and called on Ghanaians to jealously protect and preserve Ghana’s democratic credentials.
