One issue that I have heard time and time again is that politicians here in Ghana use youths for campaigning and once elected they tend to disappear.  Though there is much optimism in the youths of Ghana I have heard that in the nations that border us, Togo, Cote D’Ivoire, and Burkina Faso, that they too once shared this the same level of optimism thirty years ago, but today no more.

One article reads, “Ghana is the only member of the Commonwealth that has not implemented a National Youth Policy despite the fact that it has ratified many international treaties”. Dated August 31, 2007.

To date still no policy.

While I could dispel what I have learned and examined from being here, I am only a visitor, better to hear it from a Ghanaian.

The following is an article that was recently submitted to us here at YouthAlive and will be in our August printed edition.

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Youth, the key to our development. by Tahiru Hakeem Adamu

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The role of the youth is pivotal to the mobilization of the human capital, which can revolutionize the development process of our nation. The youth comprise the taskforce that have the natural aptitude and exuberance to achieve optimum results with few resources. This natural potency in the youth has been utilized by various societies to catalyze social, economic and political processes. The youth as history will unearth and have been used as the apparatus for engineering political resurgences, insurgencies, industrial revolutions as well as total societal transformation in societies across the world.

The negative image of youth paints a very gruesome picture in the eyes of the elderly. It is very common to hear derogatory remarks from distressed and peeved elders about the youth. Recently, my grandfather passed the comment after a cynical grin, “mmmmh, eih, the youth of today!” and reserves the rest of his words in abeyance, but the message remains clear.  The message of his pessimistic remark denotes to me that the youth of today, in his view, are naughty, stubborn, malefactors, disrespectful to their elders and are doomed for life. This perception is not just an isolated case with my grandfather but a widespread belief harbored in the minds of many elders across the country about the youth.

The question I ask myself is do the youth deserve this image and if so, are we to blame? The image painted about the youth appears as if the youth are isolated from the rest of society. The blatant truth is that to a large extent, we the youth are not always doing the right things. Many of us are uncouth, uncultured and social outcasts. Again, an objective viewer will realize that the old are as dreadful as the youth. The doctrines of every society are clearly depicted in the behavior of the youth. In other words, what the society sows is what it reaps. An uncultured youth is nurtured by an uncultured society.

The aged in our society might have lost their memory of once youthful days when the same disparaging remarks were passed onto them by their then elders. These accusations are linked to the nature of our tradition and our culture. Due to our cultural institutions the youths have been sidelined, maligned and silenced in their own world.

This ill-fated situation has rematerialized itself in our state institutions, such that the welfare of the youth is determined largely by the aged. Unfortunately, most of these people are self-centered and too concentrated on utilizing every opportunity for the youth to redress the ills of their time at the expense of the youth. I will for instance point out that the National Youth Policy which is currently at the draft stage, is exclusively initiated, developed and enforced by the so-called aged youth activists. The decrepit nature of facilities in the National Youth Councils (NYC) coupled with the lack of professionalism exhibited by some youth development workers has made the plight of the youth even more precarious. It is very evident that any mention of youth development is about sports. The Ministry of Youth and Sports has skewed its budget on sports at expense of the NYC. It is also absurd that the National Youth Employment Programme was hijacked by old citizens who mysteriously became youth for employment’s sake.

The fever of globalization has dawned on the youth of today to assert their capabilities in order to catch up with the trends of our time. However, developing countries such as ours are not liberal enough to accommodate the radical approach that the youth adopt in tackling these issues. Many of us get frustrated by anomalous systems, dysfunctional institutions coupled with bureaucratic rigmaroles in pursuance of our hearted dreams in life. This explains why some youth resort to shortcuts in life, such as armed robbery, money laundering, trafficking, internet fraud, child trafficking, smuggling of narcotics, among other despicable acts. Others take to smoking, drug abuse and alcoholism as ways of consoling themselves. The repercussions of these shortcuts are the creation of general insecurity where the youth are threats to themselves, fearsome to their communities and liabilities to the nation.

Our country is too much centered on formal education to the extent that we have lost sight of the fact that not all people are suited to this educational model. The technical and vocational institutions have failed in their attempt to empower the youth with the needed skills to be self reliant. Technically oriented programmes must equally be practically oriented. Too much adherence to formalities has overridden the mission of these institutions and has made a mere rhetoric out them.

Enable the youth.

Until a friendly environment is established that enables a youth friendly society, we can never harmonize our development potentials required to change our situation in life. The gimmicks of a country which is ready to take off in its economic growth become apparent in its youth emancipation and mobilisation.  The biggest harm a parent can do to his wards is to silence them when their hearts are pregnant with words.  In the same vein, when the opinions of the youth are silenced arbitrarily by the government, it kills their spirit of nationalism, patriotism and rekindles the flames of lack of self-confidence. This lack of confidence inculcated in them marks the genesis of all other tomfooleries that they find themselves immersed in.

A plethora of complaints on attitude is another quandary that youth have to put up with in their homes and workplaces. Infallibility is not a virtue of man, but the youth are mostly down-casted for making all too human mistakes. In my community, when an elderly person passes air in the midst of others including youth his dignity is restored, but when a youth passes air in the group, he is chastised instantly by the elders. This presupposes that the youth are supposed to be infallible. Another scenario on the rivalry between the two age groups has to do with respect. Respect as the elders society say, is reciprocal. However, the elderly always anticipate for too much respect from the youth to the extent that it is not sometimes possible for the youth accord them. A sharp contradiction to the allusion that respect is reciprocal is the fact that a good number of elderly people have seen the need under any circumstance to undermine the youth. They blame their own iniquities on the attitudes of the youth to cover their own. There is popular saying that when a fish rots, it starts with the head.

Not all youths are the same.

When monkeys aggravate our crop yield, we become infuriated and end-up insulting all monkeys because we cannot decipher which monkey or group of monkeys did it. It is very preposterous when the old affronts the youth in this same generic sense. Unlike the monkey, every youth belongs to one particular family or another. It is the individual allegedly arrogant young people that add up in their multitudes to form the youth that the public antagonizes. If every old person was responsible enough to their young, the situation would not have been so unwholesome. It will rather stop the acrimony if the society swallows the bitter capsules by admitting that the behavior of the youth is a microcosm or a blueprint of the behavior of larger society. The youth is one the three pillars that support the tower of society.

In comparative analysis, it would be invalid to say that the youth of America, Asia or Europe are just like the youth Africa. Narrowing to Africa, it will be unacceptable to say the youth Nigeria, Angola, Senegal etc. are just like the youth of Ghana. Even in Ghana, young people in Kumasi, Cape Coast, Tamale, Wa etc have different behavioral predispositions. The socio-economic and cultural dynamics constitutes the fundamental blocks upon which the character traits of youths are built. The values of each of the above mentioned societies are the determinants of the behavioral traits nurtured in their youths.

Society is dynamic and susceptible to change. Globalization, technological advancement and change in the ecological system are some of the key external factors that push for corresponding general modification in the society, but not the youth per say. The vagaries of these modifications are motivated by evolutionary dynamics of time and space in the midst of globalization. When the elders say “the youth of these days….”, they say it relative to time (that is their time). Time is not static, and the stigma will continue in such equivocal and cyclical order so that once you graduate from a younger generation to an older generation, you are disassociated automatically from that stigma. The society is balanced by virtues its dynamism. We must appreciate the forces at play, if we want to maintain its balance.

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