What's happening in our western neighbour, Cote d'Ivoire is too close for comfort.

Time was when we looked westwards with envy because Cote d'Ivoire, we thought had all the best things going for her. If you wanted a drug you couldn't find in Ghana, you tried Abidjan.

If it was a special spare part for your car which was not available in Ghana, you sent an SOS to Abidjan. If it was fashion trends, you sought inspiration from Abidjan. Indeed Ghanaians used to say that plantains and other food items from that country were bigger than the Ghanaian varieties.

Then over night, all of that went up in gun smoke. It's never been the same again as the country has been sliding into more and more chaos and underdevelopment.

Last week violence flared up again and the coalition that had been put together by the international community after the coup attempt of September 2002 started coming apart.

Now Cote d'Ivoire is without an effective government and disintegration is facing her right in the face. Yet another failed state in the post independence African hall of infamy.

All eyes are now on Ghana's President Kufuor as ECOWAS Chairman to work out some miracle that would save his neighbour.

We can all only pray for him and wish him luck in this "mission-almost-impossible".

As our President is gradually building a good reputation as a peacemaker, back home he is being undermined daily by some of his countrymen led by a man who once occupied the executive office at the Osu Castle: Mr. Rawlings Indeed, so vile is this individual that he recently described President Kufuor as a "disgrace" to Africa.

What could have motivated or rather irked him so much to come up with such an insulting turn of phrase is best known to him, but ADM can bet its last newsprint that Rawlings is spoiling for a fight that would turn Ghana into the kind of failed state Cote d'Ivoir has become.

Rawlings just wants to be able to tell the international community that "I told you so. Without me, these punks cannot take care of themselves." If he can engineer any mayhem, all the better for his stratagems.

His constant reference to the Dagbon crisis is because he has rightly identified it as Ghana's security Achilles Heel and if the Abudus and Andanis would be stupid enough to allow their traditional area to be used as a battlefield, Rawlings would just be too glad to oblige.

Ghanaians must learn whatever lessons there are from Cote d'Ivoire, and God knows, there are many lessons. The first and most important lesson is "Do not start". We should not allow our country to be pushed to the brink, because once we get going, there is no stopping it until we have bled ourselves dry.

All indications are that Cote d'Ivoire is on that path. But we pray that good sense would prevail and normalcy would be restored there and our country would also continue on her path of peace and fama Nyame.