Indiscipline – a major factor in Ghana’s under-development

Without discipline nothing much can be achieved or sustained by anybody or any group of people.  It is a very important virtue to sustainable development and success.  It is like a seed which must be planted and nurtured.

Discipline is the counsellor and friend of champions. It has been said that, “The unexamined life is not worth living”.  One might also state that, “The undisciplined life is not worth living”.

The word “indiscipline” is the opposite of the word “discipline”.  Indiscipline, is defined as,  “A lack of control in the behaviour of a group of people”.

The noun for the word discipline, is defined as, “The practice of training people to obey rules and orders and punishing them if they do not; the controlled behaviour or situation that results from this training”.

The Akwapim landscape, especially the portion leading to Aburi is losing its green vegetation. The refreshing green belt is giving way to all kinds of construction works and development. Don’t we admire beauty?  Have we forgotten the admonition which says, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”?

I was saddened as I made a journey along the Aburi road recently and saw the destruction of the once beautiful green landscape.  Oh dear, what can the matter be?

Ghanaians are becoming noisier by the day, with all the laws on levels of noise by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

We have laws which neither bark nor bite? Laws which are broken by the old and young, rich and poor, the elite, the unlettered and even the religious.

Are the law enforcement agents operating as toothless bulldogs?  Are many of us empty barrels making much noise?!!!  Much ado about nothing?   We need to change.

Lack of water for domestic use, sanitation and environmental degradation are issues which have confronted us for some time now. Are these insurmountable problems?  We have Ministries, agencies and public officials who are to help find solutions to these challenges. Are these institutions and officials only interested in the goodies they get rather than solving developmental problems?

By our indiscipline, our forbears got us into slavery and colonialism.   Or we were tricked into it?   Colonialism or subjugation in any form is not the best way any group of people would want to live and develop.  Somehow we found ourselves in slavery and colonialism.

But as one African poet, Lenrie Peters puts it, “This is not the time to lay wreaths on yesterday’s crimes.”

Ghana has been independent from British colonial rule for 56 years now.  While it has struggled to achieve some level of success in governance, it is quite obvious that much still remains to be done by both governors and the governed for the nation to have sustainable development.

We don’t have to be over-complacent. Comparing this country to other African countries, Ghana is only like ‘a one-eyed giant among the blind’.

We know the problems and challenges.  We also have the solutions.  Let our leaders help us to get the jobs done.

They must lead by setting the right examples in discipline and ensure that others are doing the same.

Let’s stop the blame game.  Now let us in our sober moments reflect on the poem below.

We Have Come Home

We have come home
Bringing the pledge
Which is written in rainbow colours
Across the sky-for burial
But is not the time
To lay wreaths
For yesterday’s crimes,
Night threatens
Time dissolves
And there is no acquaintance
With tomorrow.

Lenrie Peters (Sierra Leone)

By Akwasi Agyeman-Dua

Email: [email protected]