State of the Nation Address

President John Mills delivers his state of the nation address, the third time since assuming office in 2009, and expectations are that he’ll be genuine with his approach-telling Ghanaians things are not as rosy as he wants us all to believe.

A political ritual started by former President John Kufour, Mills has kept the tradition, offering Ghanaians an insight, or supposed insight, of current state of affairs at the country. At his first address to the nation, he touched on governance, private sector development and agriculture, among others.
President Mills said he’ll move “beyond rhetoric and execute a programme to rehabilitate existing irrigation schemes to ensure their efficient utilization.” He made the statement with respect to how the government plans to boost agriculture production in the country.

“The Government will address simultaneously the issues of food availability, access to food, response to crises situations and malnutrition. The Government will invest adequately to maintain the production level of those crops for which we have surplus production and put in measures to increase significantly the production level of those crops for which we have deficit production.”

The said ‘rhetoric certainly applies to every facet of the plans he put forward to Ghanaians. It includes how to tackle soaring unemployment, create jobs (certainly not the one point six million ghost jobs), corruption, education and health. Then there is also security.

The president is in his third year and the views out there are that ‘people no dey see top.” Forget the insincere rumblings from the opposition NPP (they are just waiting in the wings to continue from where their looting ended) and their everyday cries of ‘enkoyie.’ The average Ghanaian is struggling to hold on to a job. Even those lucky to be employed the salary at the end of the month is absolutely nothing to talk about.

The state of the nation at this time is that at almost 54 years of age the ordinary Ghanaian continues to lose hope in the country of his birth, because he cannot find any decent opportunity to better himself. At the state of the nation today our education system is in crisis, with students at the tertiary levels struggling to fit into lecture rooms.

We are still struggling with the exact figure for our population size: 24million, 25million? That is still shrouded in mystery.

The state of the nation is that people have no access to water, even in the capital-Accra. Power outages have become very normal. It is a blessing to have uninterrupted power supply for a whole week, at 54 years. We have enough sunshine but not thinking through how to tap into it.

The state of the nation is that our economic paradigm is still unclear, though we are told Rome was never built in a day. So, must we wait for 300 years to develop?
The state of the nation is that inflation figures for the NDC are different from that of the NPP. Despite their silly argument
The state of the nation is that there is no policy plan that all the political parties are following to put the country on a sound footing. The state of the nation is that corruption is rifled.

The state of the nation is that if you are in opposition you think right but in government? Your thinking leads right into your stomach.
That is the state of the nation.