Time and again, the very word Africa rings with institutional failure, ignorance, disease and p poverty. We are a continent with vast resources yet with much poverty. Everybody complains, criticizes the system and sits on the fence. Hopelessness, despondency and a cloud of darkness is what we all despair in. Let me be quick to say that, nobody will change our continent for us unless we do it ourselves. Leadership has always failed especially after post independence. The mentality that Africa is destined to fail has gripped every facet of our society. In religion, business, industry, academia, politics and unfortunately in Students governance, we do not trust our institutions and we think that the best way to solve the problem is to neglect them. I do understand the disappointment we have gone through over the years in the struggle to raise leaders who will be men and women of their words. I have been part of that disappointment and have my misgivings about these institutions.
But I have discovered that, continued defiance is not the solution to our problem but rather it deepens our woes.
We have an individual duty and a collective responsibility to change our institutions and it starts right here in University of Ghana with our Students Representative Council (SRC). The name SRC revokes images of dormancy and ineffectiveness, a puppet of the system while some even call for the closure of the SRC. University of Ghana is a microcosm of Ghana. Its population represents every facet of Ghana and arguably has the finest brain of our Country’s generation. America and the western world have been developed because their Tertiary Students have not given up. They have always questioned the system, challenged existing ideas with alternatives. We have a duty to revamp and restore our SRC to the pedestal that it belongs. During electioneering period, our active participation in the process is a step towards changing the system but it does not stop there. We have a responsibility to scrutinize candidates to know what they are bringing on board, what they have done in the past for the Students Movement to serve as a litmus test that when we give them the opportunity they can do it. After voting, we must keep our leaders accountable and answerable to their promises. Our attitudes towards the SRC today will determine whether it will be effective tomorrow or not. Do we want to be remembered as a generation that sat unconcern while the SRC collapsed? The SRC represents us on University boards and Councils, make decisions for us-some are so bitter that, some of our dear colleagues defer their courses every academic year. Most of these policies we are not happy with, but we sit unconcern.
The bell of graduate unemployment is ringing all over our country, as University Students we do not care. Some of us are praying so hard to go abroad. These countries we yearn so much to go to, built their institutions, their University students did not run away from problems, they solved them.
They reconstructed their Students Governance and sung the Slogan, Together We Can Do it. More importantly, the Western Countries are tightening their immigration rules. This is to tell us that we have no place to go to but to use our brains as University students to light the unquenchable Candle of Hope and fan patriotism for our Country. The SRC was established to represent the interest of STUDENTS FIRST but that tradition and purpose have been lost. Let us re-build our SRC, let us participate effectively in the up-coming SRC elections, and Let us pursue the interest of STUDENTS FIRST. It is Our duty, Our responsibility. If we do not do it, nobody will do it for us. We have to do it; We can do it and am certain We will do it. God Bless You. God Bless Our SRC.
STUDENTS FIRST?.Ur Mind 4 Dey
By: Edmond KOMBAT
