Ghana is gradually losing its once beautiful cultural heritage (language, dance, food as well as family identity). Many of our children have become aliens in their own land due to our love for foreign culture.
During the just ended limited biometric registration organised by the Electoral Commission to register Ghanaian children who are eighteen years and above reviled that about seventy per cent of children born in Accra do not know their home town.
I visited close to forty registration centers in five (5) constituencies namely: Adentan, Dome-Kwabenya, Madina-La Nkwantang, Ayawaso East and West all in the Greater Accra region.
This revelation came to light when I spoke to some Registration Officers, parents and children who came to register at the various centers.
Out of the thirty per cent (30%) who know their native towns, fifteen per cent (15%) of them have been there only once. Ten per cent (10%) have been there not more than three occasions whiles the remaining five per cent (5%) said they do visit regularly especially during Christmas and Easter festivities.
Another striking thing was that a whooping twenty-five per cent (25%) out of the 30% who are fortunate to have been to their home towns before, do not know their districts or municipal, let alone the municipal/district capitals, their Municipal/District Chief Executives as well as Member of Parliament.
The irony of the situation is that about eighty per cent (80%) of those who went to get their names inscribe in the voters register have either complete Senior High School (SHS) or in their final year in SHS whiles the remaining twenty per cent (20%) in their first year in the various higher learning institutions.
A clear example was a nineteen years old girl (name withheld) who was born in Adenta and hails from Prampram in the Ningo-Prampram District all in the Greater Accra Region, does not know her native town Prampram.
According to her, she has lived all her life in Adenta and has never travel beyond Accra-Tema station let alone to her native Prampram which is just an hour and half journey from where she lives (Adenta).
One area which is under serious and constant treat is our various unique local languages which play a pivotal role in our cultural settings. Our language makes us out from other tribes even within Ghana but sadly enough majority of our children today cannot speak and write their native language.
I sometime find it so difficult to comprehend, when people make mockery of others who makes mistake when speaking the queen?s language (English) to any of our local dialect this is how far we have reduced our local languages to.
I am surprise to see state schools boldly written on their walls ?Don?t speak vernacular? in this school, though there is a directive by the Ministry of Education through Ghana Education Service (GES) instructing heads of basic schools to use our local dialect to teach pupils from cr?che to the lower primary level.
Today, most of our parents feel proud, when they hear or see their toddlers speaking the queen?s language but reprimand them when they speak vernacular. Shockingly parents now equate a child who speaks English language fluently to be an intelligent person.
According to the Omanhene of Breman Akroma, Nana Kwodwo Buabeng II, our educational institutions churns out thousands of graduates (from Junior High School to the university level) yearly.
He said the situation calls for more pragmatic approach from all stakeholders and appealed to government to take immediate steps to reverse the down ward trend of our cultural practices.
Nana Kwodwo Buabeng II, also call on parents to send their wards to their native homes any time they visit, especially during funerals of close relatives, festivals and other traditional events.
By: FRANKLIN ASARE-DONKOH, Freelance Journalist.
Email: [email protected]
yuletide .
which if not check immediately? serious national crisise
