The Government Dependency Syndrome

As a young boy, I learned the power of collective effort. As boys we will get into groups to work in turns on each other’s farm. It was an initiative that someone might think is the same as working on your own farm the number of days equal to the number of people in the group. But if one could work that much then what was the purpose of having the group anyway? The logical answer is that it is not that simple working alone on your farm that much as compared to working together as a group. It was most times daunting going to the farm alone. Then when you get there the quietude of the fields and the imposing posture of the elephant grass scares you. You are not able to work that long and that much and you quickly return home when the sun begun to unleash its venom.

But working in groups is something special and inspirational. It is as if you do not get tired. It is competitive whether you are working on your own farm or others. The presence of your friends next to you bent over with their hoes in hand mauling shrub and grass on their way pushed you to do same. Moreover, some colleagues would go the extra mile and work more than the average making you do same for them. The chitchats, gossips, teases and the mimics made the sun passed away without noticing its venom. In a group we were able to accomplish more than as individuals. After all we were taught that unity is strength. A broom sweeps better than a broom stick.

So I learned that it takes much more and many days for an individual to achieve something that will take fewer days in a group. I got to know that as a group we could achieve much. And in those days the spirit of communalism was widespread and strong among the people in our community. I remember when the first junior high school block was built; it was not the government that did it. Community members contributed money and volunteered their time and skills to erect the structure in which I had my junior secondary school education. During what is called communal labour, community members gather to clean gutters and weed their surroundings to keep the community clean.

And back then there was a government. People did not wait for the government to come clean their communities for them. People did not wait for the government to come and lay the foundation for a school or a clinic or a toilet facility for them. They started all on their own and if they are lucky the government comes to complete the rest.

So what went wrong? Why all of a sudden each one of us has developed cold feet towards what concerns all of us? We have become more talkers than doers while in the past we talked less and did more. We are now looking more to the government to solve all our problems for us including sweeping our homes and cleaning our gutters whiles in the past we took those initiatives ourselves.

Imagine in a number of communities in Ghana pupils have no classrooms but study under trees. Imagine they do not have tables and chairs but to sit on the floor to study. But in the same communities we have wood that is being cut illegally, sold and exported outside this country. And the people responsible for these illegal activities are the ones we entrust with the responsibility of ensuring that the children have good education. They connive with the chiefs and some members of the communities to log these woods and ship them outside while their children sit on the floor. When all it takes is just cutting some of these woods and with the help of the carpenters in the community they could have made a table and chair at a time for their children to sit on. But we still wait for government. Is it not also possible to erect classrooms for our children if government is not coming to do it? Especially in remote areas of this country where most of the houses are built with mud and roofed with thatch, all it takes is just a few days of communal labour and that will be done.

We have also depended on cutlass and hoe for so long that in this modern era, while it takes less than 5% of some countries population to produce food to feed the whole country, the more than 60% of the population engaged in farming cannot feed us. It is a shame that it is the older population who still engage in farming while every young person is either looking for a government job or leaves the village for the city. Farming is typically unattractive because it still involves the use of the old ways of doing it. How much will it take for communities to own their own farm equipments like tractors, harvesters, harrowers and planters? I know in our country some areas are noted for growing certain crops. Is it not possible to identify these areas and provide farm machinery for the farmers in these communities, constitute them into groups to own large farm lands? Except for vegetables and fruits storage should not be a problem, since our farmers have age old methods of storing their produce. These methods can be improved upon. The farmers could have a strong collective bargaining power through this process ensuring that they get value for their produce.

What happened to the native doctors in our remote communities? The traditional midwives? These people could be at the forefront of saving lives. What they need is a little training. We cannot abandon absolutely everything we have. In our villages we still eat yam and cassava, pound fufu with pestle and mortar and still cook yakayake in clay pots. Nothing prevents us from doing what has worked in the past. Just a little training and improvement our lives could become much better and we could meet the millennium development goals. Just in the case of building a community school through communal labour we can build a community health post.  Even if we cannot get medical doctors and nurses to work there we can have our own trained native doctors and traditional midwives working to save lives.

There is no reason where people should still drink water from streams. Is it not allowed anymore to dig wells? All the wells that I used when I was growing up were dug by members of my community. Communities could provide their own good drinking water. It is true good underground water is not something that can be found everywhere. However, there is no harm in trying to find good water so that people can live healthily

Somehow many of our problems can be solved without necessarily waiting for government. All it takes is mobilizing ourselves as members of a community and committing ourselves to a purpose and project. Government has a responsibility to provide every community with basic social amenities like schools, health post and water. My point here is not to absolve government of that responsibility. The thing is that we as communities have a lot of resources at our disposal and instead of misusing these resources it is better to use it for the benefit of our communities.

Maybe we have just become more individualistic, selfish and corrupt. There is nothing anymore like ‘we are each other’s keeper’. Just like our government which depends on outside support while misapplying those donor funds and exploiting the nation’s resources for selfish gains we too have become government dependent. Can we break these chains that enslave our minds and hands from using what is ours to solve our own problems?

I think that just like when we were kids we worked in groups to help each other on our farms, we can do the same to help our communities. The time to start is now. Let a new generations of Ghanaians develops a sense of belongingness and put the group, community and nation interest before individual ones.