WHY THE YOUTH MUST APPRECIATE AND VOTE FOR NANA AKUFO-ADDO AGAIN

As the four-year political term of the Akufo-Addo government diminished from years into months, and now eventually getting into weeks, the obligation on the part of the youth in Ghana’s electoral space to make a crucial choice heightens.

The choices are particularly critical on account of events unfolding in the sub-region, which do not only have the potential to affect growth, as predicted by global business agencies and developing partners, but also threaten to create anarchy.

Stability or neglect

While the issues may not be entirely the same as in Guinea, which has just run into an electoral ditch, or Burkina Faso and Niger, which are both confronted with security and democratic challenges, our collective challenge, as a sub-region dependent on each other, is maintaining economic resilience and social stability.

In Burkina Faso, where about 90 per cent of the working population is employed in agriculture, militia activity is eating up democratic and economic gains as rural folks abandon crop and livestock activities and head towards urban centres to seek jobs that are unavailable.

It is about the same in Niger, where jihadist activity has increasingly been intolerable – of course, with threats to food insecurity and communal instability.

Next door in Cote d’Ivoire, the situation is dire in the light of the incumbent President’s decision to alter the constitution despite an Afrobarometer Report suggesting that 86 per cent of the population was against the attempt.

Nigeria

With Nigeria and its well-equipped military forces embroiled in seething internal strife over the activities of the notorious SARS, the only safe haven in the sub-region, economically and politically, is Ghana, despite an attempt by some demented elements to disturb the otherwise stable Volta Region.

The ECOWAS leadership and international civil society groups have been attempting a firefighting in an unnecessary internal conflict that has affected the economic fortunes of businesses and workers in the private sector, just because criminal militancy was allowed to blend with the poorly-managed protests.

We can imagine the ripples in the light of our business relations with Nigeria as well as our trade relations with all of these countries which are holding elections around this time into the end of December 2020 – aside of the possibility of investors like SHOPRITE pulling out of Nigeria.

Then, we ask ourselves where the blame ought to go, in a nation whose countryside is also sunder fire.

Moving forward

Set against the background of the ‘political murder’ of the late Mfantseman MP, Ekow Quansah Hayford, is the fact that the suspects are young people, to whom the future of this country and, for that matter, that of the sub-region belong.

As a star in the sub-region, evidenced in our growth and developmental goals, we have effectively utilised our institutions to stay the course, despite subtle attempts on the part of the leading opposition party to fuel tension in the country. At a point, we involved revered traditional rulers in surmounting age-old conflicts.

Unfortunately, the entire sub-region is populated by myriads of ethnic groupings – all of them with economic rights and traditions to protect in a globalized world. And Ghana has had its fair share of these challenges, including the lingering Fulani herdsmen clashes with farmers and the notion that they populate the bandit dens and activities across borders.

Being circumspect

As is expected in most of these countries that are voting between now and the end of the year, the responsibility of the youth is to make a choice into the future – not cede their destiny into the hands of political bandits who are looking for short-cuts into political office and inherent fruits.

This is the time to say ‘No’, and avail ourselves of the electoral processes to vote in the December 7 elections for the ruling New Patriotic Party, which has abundantly shown that it has the future of the youth at heart, particularly in terms of improving their security, their lives and livelihoods.