You know the thing about the death of a loved one is you never ever heal from it. Sometimes on a random day the grief can just hit you, sometimes in mid conversation
The bicycles and chop boxes will certainly help the students, and nobody should begrudge them that.
But this is where our politics has gone wrong.
Instead of fixing the country so that transportation systems can reliably get students to school, and instead of creating an economy where parents can afford school essentials for their children, we have reduced the role of the MP to a "constituency caretaker" handing out relief whenever the opportunity arises.
We have become so accustomed to this model that we celebrate the politician for giving us droplets of honey while rarely asking why the system keeps making everyone poor enough to need the honey in the first place.
The MP gives bicycles because students struggle to get to school.
But why are students struggling to get to school in the first place?
Parents need chop boxes because they cannot afford basic school items.
Why are parents struggling to provide basic necessities for their children?
And this is bigger than Hon. Ablakwa. It's a problem with how we have come to understand political representation.
We elect MPs to make laws, scrutinise government, represent our interests and help shape policies that improve the conditions of our communities.
Yet we have gradually reduced that responsibility to:
“What did my MP give me?”
So an MP can give 100 bicycles today and receive praise, while we fail to ask the much more important question:
Why does the system require an MP to personally provide bicycles for children to get to school?
Relief is necessary when people are struggling. But relief should never become the substitute for reform.
Because if the system remains broken, the MP will keep giving bicycles, chop boxes, scholarships, medical support and other forms of assistance, and the people will keep returning every election cycle with new needs.
That is not development.
We shouldn't only ask our MPs what they are giving us. We should be asking them why the country is structured in a way that leaves so many people unable to afford basic needs in the first place.
The ultimate goal should be to build a country where people don't need political patrons to survive.
Don't just give us the fish. Let's have the conversation about why we cannot afford to buy fish.
#Ghanamustwork
We were played so good..I have to give it to the colonisers 🤣🤣🤣
I've lived in the UK for years & I'VE NEVER ONCE heard a SINGLE citizen pray for better days...They push their leaders for changes that they want to see & CHANGE Prime Ministers LIKE CLOTHES to achieve that...
One day we’ll talk about how Ghanaian men like unnecessary and inappropriate touching. You’re walking in town, sellers will touch you. You’re buying something, they’ll touch you even when there’s no need. You’re talking to someone, they’ll touch you and tell you how pretty you are, smh. Y’all have no idea how disturbing it is to touch someone you don’t know personally.
waking up with full 8 hours of sleep to see martinez in tears, enzo red card, argentina being sore losers, messi and yamal 0 goals, while kylian is the all time top scorer and olise having mosts assist in a single wc
One of my biggest dreams is to build a company that creates opportunities for women who started later than expected.
Internships and graduate trainee programs for women in their late 20s and 30s. Remote jobs for women in their 40s and 50s.
The African continent doesn’t need more entrepreneurs. It’s full of them.
What it needs is a specific class of entrepreneurs called industrialists: business people who build value-adding firms in export-oriented job creating sectors, not rent capture.
Singapore has no minerals. Japan was bombed to rubble in 1945. Vietnam was at war for decades. All three built cities with parks, public squares, functional public transport, and green urban spaces that serve their people.
Walk through Accra, Lagos, Nairobi, Douala, or Kinshasa and find somewhere to sit that is not a shop, a bar, or a church. You will not find it.
These cities sit inside some of the most fertile, green, tropical land on earth. And somehow every trace of it was designed out of the urban experience. No parks. No shade. No public squares. Nowhere a person can simply exist without spending money.
The geopolitics argument runs out when you look at who recovered from worse and built better. We are collectively and embarrassingly disorganized and we need to start saying that out loud.
Change does not start with governments. It starts with enough people refusing to accept this as normal. Share this if you agree. Talk about it. Demand better from your city.