THE SILENCE OF THE SISAALA STUDENT FRONT: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE NOW & THE FUTURE, WHAT IS & WHAT COULD BE.

From Aristotle to Confuscious to Kwame Nkrumah and the Amilca Cabral, one thing has always stood out. The intentional creation of fertile grounds for progressive minds to grow and to contribute thoughts, wits to the construction and reconstruction of society’s thought patterns and development towards a certain trajectory. That’s why the Chinese have the Confuscious institute in the University of Cape Coast that is making ground breaking discoveries. Where is ours? Do we have any revered schools of thoughts? What are our philosophies as a country?. I’m sure we can spend a whole day debating without arriving at a compromise.

Societies are build around a thought pattern. That is what has developed into schools as exhibited my the ancient mystery school systems in Egypt, Ethiopia etc Today, in Ghana, we have ours in political parties. We only make noise and do not make any meaningful ground breaking progressive contributions to already existing literature. I can tell you of one who did though. Kwame Nkrumah. He has laid the blueprint to our salvation. On the contrary regardless of his flaws, Ghanaians have vilified, crucified him even more than Jesus Christ, instead of celebrating him. The question is, will we consider it. It is why our schools churn our a bunch of indoctrinated, visionless, dangerous educated illiterates who cannot think beyond being enslaved into employment with foreign corperations or waiting for party to come to power so they can be given political appointments so they can syphone the nations meagre reaources. How sad.

Let’s bring it down to the basis. The very basic. The core of our organisation into a clan, a community, district, region and by large, a country. How do we understand our existence as a people from the very basic unit of our organisation. What are our philosophies and what ideals do we uphold & believe in? Thus, hitherto, northerners were known as hardworking, truthful and honest in their dealings. Are they still known for that?

The Sisaala people were known for their industriousness and Agricultural prowess. We are still known as such including our unique culture. But can we still boast of our unadulterated unique culture and what defines us philosophically, religiously and culturally? Have we passed on the knowledge as our ancestors did from generation to generation. Have we laid a foundation for the progress of our society as our ancestors tried to do that resulted in producing a president? What is the road map that this current generation has adopted and riding on to provide a solid foundation for the generations yet unborn.

The most important question of the decade is what our learned, educated folks are doing to keep the torch on while passing on knowledge unto the next generation?
My focus is on the student front. They are supposed to be the enlightened mouth piece of the Sisaala people in the out there. It seems much has been done but much has yet to be achieved. They find it difficult to even identify with who they are, to associate with their clansmen talkless of building a formidable united front to make enough contributions and noise to attract attention to bring certain developmental projects to the Sisaala area. But I can tell you one thing the Sisaala students are good at i.e celebrating birthdays on social media and not discussing serious pertinent issues.

In my opinion, the student front has more to offer than it has done. They have become too moot & toothless bull dogs that can only bark when they are hungry. The few that try to bite are reduced to political gerrymandering. The ones that have informed opinions and can actually bite are either ignored or given political colouration. The student front is unable to present a united intellectual front or pressure group that can make available literature to not only inform the Sisaala people but also bring to the attention of the authorities the inequalities that has been intentionally meted on the Sisaala area.

Who is to blame? We all are. The so called big “boys” whose only strength is to give out handouts to people behind the scene to work as attack dogs to do their bidings. It is history sad that a group of people can’t put themselves together to fight for their social rights that have been denied them for so long.

The success of any group of people is contingent in their human resource base. That is why Alexandria the great of Mecedonia burnt down the great libraries of Egypt, killed the sages and carried all the good books to Greece to his teacher Aristotle who told him of the powerful knowledge that resided in the Egyptian mystery schools. It is the same reason that made the Caucasian or the European to carry away all our skilled men & women as slaves to build their economies and country’s leaving behind a generational gap of clueless, uninformed, uneducated, ignorant children and very old folks who can’t do much. These abled bodied men build what is now Europe. Where as the African or Ghanaian or the Sisaala man was denied that transfer of technical knowledge to build his own country. This explains the state we find ourselves today.

Thus, if upon being indoctrinated with useless European curriculum, we still come out and call ourselves educated & yet to contribute insignificantly to our own growth while refusing to go back and relearn all the knowledge that was lost to us, then I’m afraid we are doomed because all our focus is on who can write the best political articles to defend a political god father or writing articles to defend party regardless of wether what the party does makes sense.

Think about it. In this day and age, I dare say that every school in Ghana from JHS to the University should be enjoying solar powered air-conditioned class rooms because Ghana is blessed with so much sun or ground breaking technological inventions from KNUST should have been driving our industry; science, automobile by now. But what do we see? Same old copy hook, line & sinker someone else’s ways of doing things in their context and applying it to our context. It won’t work because the variables may differ.

Considerably, the Sisaala area (as a case study) led by the stakeholders (Sisaala Youth Groups, house of chiefs, CSO’s, political leaders etc) should have a local policy document that seeks to focus on areas of prime interest/ need of the Sisaala area and that is where priority should be given in higher education so that we can produce more doctors, agronomist, nurses, teachers, herbal doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs as these are specific areas that needs concentration and development. In this way, many skilled labour specific to our area could be produced to give better services to the people thereby contributing to the quality of life of the people.

Again, the focus of education is to produce people with expertly refined informed opinions & skill set who can provide solutions to our daily problems. It is also to additionally speak to issues bedevilliing the people since apparently they will be the mouth piece of the people. That seems to be highly missing among us. What we can actively observe is too many students with too many defensive political opinions mounting insults on people with differing political opinions. If half as much energy is vested into writing and discussing issues of concern to us and proferring solutions to our daily problems, I bet you we may be better off than we currently are.

A retrospection is needed to come to a deliberate conclusion on what the role of the Sisaala student front should be i.e their role in shaping the development of the Sisaala area. It is not enough to just receive an education and be called a degree holder. No! It is far beyond that. We can become a vehicle of progressive comtributants to opinion and issues. It is not enough to be mediocre. The student front in the various campuses can harness their synergy to comment on pivotal issues and cause for accountability of our leaders & also profer better solutions to the problems we are faced with. We have experts in farming, taxation, entrepreneurship, arts & entertainment, culture etc. Why can’t we harness the expert knowledge from our students who are researchers and apply them to our specific needs.

Why can’t the student front be a sort of pressure group that can put to perspective the issues that affect the Sisaala land. Why have the Sisaala Student Union branches in the various tertiary  campuses not taken center stage in issues concerning the devastating rosewood saga & the recent EU €35m funded Agricultural Farm access roads? Maybe there’s something I’m missing. This is a wakeup call to whoever is reading. Let’s wake up from the Slumber.

For God & the Sisaalaland.
Chief Bukari Kuoru
0202303331.
22-06-2021.