By Kodwo Brumpon
“A tree does not grow from the leaves downward.” – Akan proverb
Our story as a nation has been one of audacious dreams and sobering contradictions. As a nation that birthed Africa’s independence from colonial rule, we still remain caught in a absurdity.
We are rich in resources and intellect, yet we are perennially struggling to transcend the traps of corruption, dependency, and institutional decay.
This current state begs us to examine how we can and should restore a sense of purpose to a people who cannot fathom how they found themselves in this dilemma. The path may not lie solely in structural reforms but in a transformative inner renaissance. The time is ripe for us to awaken our souls and reshape the concept of citizenry from within.
This attitudinal quest inspires us to dissect governance and the legacies of our leaders, not as heroes or villains, but as mirrors reflecting the average Ghanaian’s unresolved tension between ideology and survival, patriotism and self-interest.
The onset of the “African independence” coincided with the cultural modernity of the twentieth century which remodeled governance as an arena dominated more by external forces and metrics such as GDP figures, election results, and policy mandates, while neglecting the intrinsic qualities that builds societies.
Consequentially, our leaders have always prioritised short-term gains over the long-term welfare of the nation. A strategy which has created an existential crisis for the continent. This external focus has been a distraction that made our leaders neglect a crucial truth of development, which is that it cannot be decreed or digitized. It grows from the soil of shared values.
When Kwame Nkrumah declared Ghana as an independent nation, he embodied a vision of a united, progressive Africa built on a synthesis of cultural pride, intellectual dynamism, and spiritual depth. He believed his people were committed towards spinning the discuss of self-realisation and concluding that true power must always come from within.
His over-estimation dented his legacy. Decades later, a charismatic Jerry Rawlings stormed the political scene with the “probity and accountability” manifesto, promising a cleansing of the rot of ‘kalabule’ would enable and empower the people to flourish. Interestingly, he realized too late that governance was more than just populist fury and tactical acumen.
The Nkrumah-Rawlings dichotomy reveals our nation’s enduring governance crisis. Both leaders fostered a culture of over-reliance on leaders. Nkrumah’s ‘Africa Must Unite; rhetoric and Rawlings’ revolutionary theatrics conditioned Ghanaians to await deliverance from above, eroding civic agency.
This has nurtured a deep-rooted reliance on charismatic, centralized leadership, and over time has fostered a dependency mentality that limits citizen agency in development. It has cultured many citizens to look upward for solutions rather than downward to their own collective capabilities. Today, this manifests in voter apathy, partisan clientelism, and a ‘blame-the-leader’ reflex that absolves citizens of complicity.
As with all reliant strategies, our cultural emphasis on centralised leadership has inadvertently impeded grassroots development. It is not surprising that the bulk of the people often feel that their voices and local initiatives are secondary. This discourages active participation in local governance and stifles community-based innovation. In its place, we have encouraged a ‘hero worship’ mentality, where the leader is seen as the only one capable of effecting change.
This attitude has eroded the collective confidence of citizens, such that they mostly channel their efforts on bootlicking just to be noticed. As a result, many individuals have nurtured the ‘pull-him-down’ crab mentality, thereby missing opportunities to develop skills in leadership, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It is the reason we keep on perpetuating the passive recipients of development cycle rather than becoming active architects of our own progress.
The scariest trait of this over-dependency on our leaders is that we do not grant them the time to develop home-grown solutions. Instead, they are forced to import leadership blueprints that do not reconcile with our African communal values like ‘ubuntu’ – our shared humanity or ‘noboa’ – our collective labour. This forced them to frame our nation’s choices in stark terms – ‘unite or die’ and ‘revolutionise or chaos.’ The answer, perhaps, lies beyond their binaries.
We need a holistic approach that combines modernity with a return to the ‘village ethic’ they both trampled. Not the village of nostalgia, but the authentic one where citizenship means reciprocity, where leaders are stewards, not saviours, and where progress is measured not in dams or GDP, but in the quiet dignity of a people whose youth dream of vocations instead of travel visas, and where independence means uplifting a people instead of the right to exploit…
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Kodwo Brumpon is an executive coach at Polygon Oval, a forward-thinking Pan African management consultancy and social impact firm driven by data analytics, with a focus on understanding the extraordinary potential and needs of organisations and businesses to help them cultivate synergies, that catapults into their strategic growth, and certifies their sustainability.
Comments, suggestions, and requests for talks and training should be sent to him at [email protected]
