On Wednesday, March 6, 1957, Ghana became the first black African country to gain independence from colonial rule. At the time of independence, there were only eight other independent African countries. Theses were Liberia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Africa, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia. When Ghana gained independence, the Koreans were coming out of a very destructive civil war. Within six months of Ghana's independence, Malaysia also achieved her independence and soon after Singapore followed suit.

Today Korea, Malaysia and Singapore are classified among the "Asian Tigers" and only national humility and modesty prevents them from accepting the accolade of belonging to the "advanced" countries club of Europe and the Americas. In contrast, Ghana and the other sister countries plus all the other odd fifty African countries currently independent, with the exception of South Africa, are euphemistically referred to as "third-world" or "developing" countries, a face-saving, arguably more respected term coined to replace the original more degrading term "under-developed" countries.

Attempts are being made to manufacture a more conventional term "economically-challenged" to describe these perennial-disaster-prone, bankrupt-managed, aid-seeking, poverty-stricken, bottomless self-disadvantaged social, political and economic basket countries. Today, apart from South Africa, hardly any African country produces what her citizens eat or her citizens eat what the countries produce.

After 49 years of independent self-rule, Ghana is a true reflection of the deplorable African continent; a continent whose leadership Kofi Annan, the Ghanaian Secretary-General of the United Nations, describes as follows:

"In many countries (in Africa), the wrong kind have made it to the leadership. They see power for the sake of power and for their own aggrandisement rather than a real understanding of the need to use power to improve their countries. The quality of the leaders, the misery they have brought to their people and my inability to work with them to turn the situation round are very depressing.

Unless we find a way of getting them to focus on resolving conflicts and turn to key issues of economic and social development, the effort that we are all making will be for naught".

Prof. Sule Gambari, the former Nigerian Under Secretary at the United Nations, complemented Kofi Annan's comment by adding his own voice thus: "Africa failed to produce a productive middle-class but instead produced parasitic elite that lived off the fat of the land through non-productive activities dependent on political patronage".

Is it not intuitive that both commentators are Africans? It is quite obvious that Africans not just understand African problems but can also prescribe solutions. What has been the missing link?

For an answer, we can turn to a sample of the sayings of two of the greatest blackmen that ever lived - Malcolm X and Booker T. Washington. Malcolm X had this to say: "All our people have the same goals, the same objective. That objective is freedom, justice and equality. All of us want recognition and respect as human beings. Our people have made the mistake of confusing the methods with the objectives. As long as we agree on objectives, we should never fall out with each other just because we believe in different methods or tactics or strategy to reach a common objective".

Booker T. Washington is quoted as have said: "Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top, nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities".

A recent particularly politically indecent incident in this country, 49 years into our independence, brings to the forefront the wisdom in the sayings of both Malcolm X and Booker T. Washington. For well over three months, precious resources in form of lost time of the executive, the legislature, the judiciary, the security services, both the employed and unemployed were wasted, not counting the massive financial and physical national resources equally wasted, supposedly to right a legislative wrong. Why somebody should wake up from deep sleep all of a sudden at this time of pressing socio-economic problems facing this country to recognise a constitutional mole when many constitutional beams exit should be counted as a new wonder among the seven of the modern world. But that is not my only problem.

After many years of independence we cannot sit together as a nation even in hell to drink ice water together. We hardly produce anything and yet consume the best from all over the world. Productivity is so low our goods cannot compete on the international market because of high cost of production and poor finishing. Then all of a sudden the nation has been divided into almost two equal halves by a senselessly, artificially created and arguably a practically still-born animal called ROPAB, a throw back of the pre-independence era, in a manner described by the venerable K.B. Asante in his weekly column in the Daily Graphic of Monday February 27, 2006 as follows: "Many of the arguments advanced by supporters of the bill are so bizarre that they should be treated with amusement and not given the dignity of a walk-out from parliament. Neither should the matter elicit threats of dire consequences".

After nearly a half-century of independence, we as a nation cannot agree on a single priority objective let alone the methods to achieve it. Instead of our leaders using their strength to fashion out objectives and policies to move the country forward, they have degraded the education society has so costly given them, sold their consciences and the nation not for a pot of gold but a calabashful of palm wine and thereby thrown the very little respect we had as a nation at the dawn of independence to the dogs.

Our political leaders, right from independence, have turned politics into a game of brinkmanship; a winner-takes-all contest where the winner carts off the crown jewels in a Cinderella fashion and the loser is made to suffer the curse of avian flu invested birds to be culled. Always pungently redolent of the gutter, politics in this country right from the pre-colonial era has acquired a particularly bad odour. Is there no way a hard working and astute politician can garner enough votes among 20 million well identified resident citizens and win elections hands down by providing the right leadership and effective and efficient management of the affairs of the state without worrying about censusless voters scattered in unidentified locations all over the world? Why should a party in power with enormous goodwill come up with a contentious bill at such time as to give a life-line and a red herring to an opposition party in disarray facing imminent disintegration to re-group over a common cause?

I have just finished reading the final part of the Article in the Daily Graphic of Saturday March 4, 2006 written by Rob Bowman on the famous historic concert staged at the Independence Square dubbed "Soul-to-Soul", as part of the anniversary celebration of Ghana's independence during the rule of Dr. K.A. Busia's Progress Party in March 1971. "Soul-to-Soul" by all account was an invigorating goldmine, which should have been exploited by any good national leadership.

Poor leadership, bankrupt management of the national affairs and lack of political will power since independence have affected our national psychic to the extent that we have lost faith in our own abilities to analyse our problems, identify solutions, and effectively and efficiently implement them. Our reliance on foreign aid and consumer goods has become legendry. There is nothing we can do without foreign support. It is triple decker headline news in national newspapers when Japan gives a local NGO US$80,000 to provide bore holes for a deprived community somewhere in a remote part of the country and yet that is the cost to the nation of the latest Japanese manufactured Toyota Land Cruiser a deputy minister uses in this country. When health professionals decide to seek loans to buy their own cars, they are provided with a match box shape and size Italian Fiat saloon cars, and yet the state manages to find hard earned foreign currency to buy expensive high grade German and Ja panese cars for low grade civil servants to use free of charge because these civil servants are the people who work closely with the politicians and offer them advice. Where is our sense and spirit of patriotism?

Currently, a new shopping mall is under construction at the Tetteh Quarshie end of the Tema Motorway. Sure as this country is going to experience the eclipse of the sun this March, the shopping mall will be completed on time to stock foreign imported goods brought in with our scarce foreign exchange earned for the nation by our hard-working cocoa farmers and miners to service just zero point zero, zero percent of the population of this country who bring in little added value to the nation in line with Gambari's thinking. My other problem is that once the shopping mall is completed, some smart businessman is going to con the President to turn himself into a salesman to add colour to the opening ceremony by handing a scissor to the President to cut the tape and thereby adding to the re-creation of the national 'concert party' outside the national theatre following its closure for repairs by our Chinese benefactors without whose help the building will collapse. The Spintex Road, which was meant as an industrial complex, has been turned into commercial and residential estate zone with massive warehouses stocking foreign goods manufactured outside the shores of this country. As Faisal Helwani put it: "That is why today we (Africans) find it convenient not only to listen to funk, rap, and all kinds of foreign music, but also in order to enjoy it you have to buy the jeans that goes with it and a kind of coca-cola in your right hand and a beef burger in your left hand".

As this dear country of ours prepares for our 50th birthday, we must reflect on some religious truth and take this nation back to God. THE LIVING BIBLE tells us: "If we ssy we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth, and calling God a liar, for He says we have sinned". A METHODIST HYMN expects us to pray thus: "Dear Lord and father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways; reclothe us in our rightful mind". The HOLY QURAN provides insight into the future for us if we do not move away from our foolish ways. It states: "They will be in garden asking one another concerning the guilty ones 'what has brought you onto the fire of hell?' They will say, 'we were not of those who offered prayers, nor did we feed the poor, and we indulged in objectionable talk with those who indulged therein, and we used to deny the day of judgement until death overtook us'"

We must fight corruption, indiscipline and political prostitution with ecclesiastic zeal. We must embrace hard work and high productivity. We must understand that no foreigner no matter how magnanimous he/she may be cannot solve our problems for us. On my part, I have come to the painful conclusion that from the incorrigible behaviour of our leaders in every field of human endeavour since independence, we the citizens must scout the fastest route to a hospital emergency room for the nation because from the various acts of omission and commission on the part of our leaders, the nation is in a state of near coma.

KWAME GYASI is a Senior Lecturer in accountancy subjects at the University of Ghana Business School, University of Ghana, Legon