#bloggingmoment

Brothers and Sisters…

There’ve been 55 years since independence. But our democracy is still relatively young. 20 years since 1992, and the death of a sitting president is certainly unprecedented and a shock. 

He formerly served as vice president, then as president;

In this country it’s hard to like a president and remain unaffiliated to any party. That’s me for you. I’ve admired this man for a long time. But I don’t support the NDC or NPP for that matter. And he gave me more reason to respect him as he served in office. In my opinion he was a man of integrity and incredibly humble, as he very often began his addresses with ‘my brothers and sisters’. I’m Christian so here comes my bias, in addition to everything else, he was a staunch christian and a strong man of faith. I haven’t seen or heard of many people who have been taunted (auto-correct says I should add tainted) like he was. From his Atta Milk days to the ecomini days, through to his death hoaxes. And his usual response was remarkably mature and positive. 

We’ve lost him but I have hope for our future. And I’m well aware of how significant these moments are in our history so I’m  going to follow life in Ghanaian politics over the next few months via @GhanaDecides. Follow them on twitter or their blog ghanadecides.com, they’ve already been doing well with this and I’m confident they’ll keep it up.

I think it’s a wake up call to uphold our constitution and our democracy. A reminder that it’s not automatic. And we ought to behave responsibly to maintain this peace. 

My primary school days are on my mind right now. We used to march to the national youth anthem. A sound reminder of its lyrics are in order:

Arise Ghana youth for your country
The nation demands your devotion
Let us all unite to uphold her
And make her great and strong
We are all involved in building our motherland. 

Ghanaians. This is the moment where we we stand up and act responsibly. We already have sworn in John Mahama as his replacement peacefully. I’m comforted by his replacement. This man, I only started to follow recently and Im confident he’ll do a great job. Coincidentally I wrote a blog post this morning about my admiration for him. It happened in Nigeria then in Malawi. Now here, and I see it just as apple says, taking democracy that is already ahead of African standards, farther into the future.

In the words of Kobby Graham: “The finest tribute to our late President will be the peaceful elections we will have in December. Rest in Peace, Your Excellency.”

#stillinshock