By Richard Lang
Mesquite, Nevada-USA
Amazon Author and Top Reviewer.
This is the story about Rigenzi which is a region filled with corruption. Politicians, police, anyone with influence takes advantage of the common people of the region. The government corruption and poor infrastructure cause Rigenzi to rely almost totally on foreign aid. Tribal conflict and language differences are the daily normal. The people are unaware of the power of education, science and technology. Poor economic conditions cause a religious revolution which focuses on spiritual intervention. However, it’s not enough to cause a major change in the overall situation.
My book, Corrupt Vision looks at the way people of present day African communities have been deceived and exploited by “new churches”.
It is also part of a campaign against government corruption and aims to enhance African thought and culture.
The desire to alleviate poverty or to escape the problem of underdevelopment remains the biggest challenge in certain parts of our world, including our own community.
The route to achieve this aim has unfortunately been influenced by misleading notions, which actually prevent us from taking up the real challenge.
We live in a changing and a competitive world that truly demands realistic approach and practical endeavour to achieve real social development.
I wrote this book because I want to urge Africans… LET US SEE THE WORLD BEYOND OUR BORDERS and,
I want to ask Ghanaians…LET US UNDERSTAND THE WORK OF GOD BEYOND OUR SPIRITUAL BELIEF.
I wrote this book because I want to push younger and future generations in African communities to learn to take up the real challenges that lie ahead of us.
Twenty four years ago, I travelled out of Ghana to seek greener pastures abroad just like many, many Ghanaians.
For me, the journey has been very different than I had envisioned. However, the opportunity I’ve had to live through the circumstances, attitudes, and basic principles that especially contributed to the success and advancement of the developed world inspired me to write this book.
When my book was first published on the internet, a friend called me from America to congratulate me and said to me: “I’ve seen your book, it is interesting and important but, I don’t think Ghanaians would buy or read it.”
I asked him why he thought so. He answered me: “because of the deep questions it addresses.”
He made a critical observation that the church as the way to learn to live a sacred life for the sake of salvation for our individual souls in the end, has been accepted by almost our entire population as the route to find better life, success and prosperity.
Due to this widespread belief, he thinks any attempt to confront it would be useless.
Then I asked him if he had any reason for travelling away from home to go and struggle abroad.
He answered: “Of course, look at what is happening there now, the social chaos that our people are stuck in, the environmental mess and, the blight caused by a massive disorganization and neglect to the people’s concerns by our leaders while they loot and share the money that they are supposed to use to improve upon the living conditions of the people.”
But this friend was quick to say that he thinks we really need to start from somewhere
So I told him; that query is the exact reason I wrote the book and I don’t think I have to hide that in order to get Ghanaians to buy or read it.
How people of our society in the present day may see my book does not stop me from putting down what I’m inspired to write.
My critical and challenging question is; All those people who desperately go along with this belief of the day, searching for wonders to solve their problems through churches, does any of them sit down to take a book to read?
All those alleged countless miracle workers in the name of God, taking advantage of the vulnerability of the masses of our community, delivering false religious messages in order to sell their spiritual services, does anyone of them sit down to read a book? No I don’t think so.
My book, Corrupt Vision is for people who are prepared to read. It is for people who want to explore the true meaning of life from the realistic point of view.
It is for people who want to share this important lesson with their children and relatives before they pass away.
It is for people who are prepared to share a practical approach to achieving social development.
I don’t need anyone to tell me that this class of people is quite small within our society because I already know that.
My book is for this very minority class of people in our society today because they are those who would be firm than ever.
They are those whose children and relatives will survive and multiply to save mother Ghana from the ongoing perceived infighting.
They are those whose children and grandchildren would be future leaders to redeem Ghana from this endemic spiritual belief that only hinders practical endeavour but creates opportunities for financially motivated preachers.
Ladies and gentlemen, I want to ask you; try to get yourself in this class. Believe me; it does not always take money or riches or higher education. It takes realistic thinking and a true sense of responsibility.
Let us bear in mind that tomorrow’s world exists for our children’s children. They cannot continue to suffer the same systematic failures in leadership that we are going through in our time.
Remember what counts in life is not the fact that you have lived, but the things you have done that makes the lives of others different.
I believe the change that younger and future generations need, can only come through a campaign such as this.
Thank you very much. God bless you all!
This article is both part of a campaign against our governance process and also to share a thought with the reading class of the Ghanaian society.
The desire for true development of our homeland requires managing our own affairs and resources rightfully, so as to use funds and revenues to build our infrastructure. It is an essential part of this timeless agenda to support citizens in securing better living conditions. Job opportunities come first, as it is most important to help people earn a living and find their dignity. Protecting and helping citizens acquire the education they need also remains a vital part of these basic principles of building our nation. With this aim, governments succeed one another with the promise of putting our organization in order. In the process, they are expected to bring about the necessary reforms in order to achieve this common aim. However, this remains the biggest challenge of our community.
Taking into account the level of development and standard of living in general since our independence (the start of our self-rule) there is ample proof that Ghanaians have become victims of failure in leadership. Our homeland is blessed with a wealth of natural resources and raw materials. We have hardworking people who tirelessly make good use of our bit of the earth and fertile soil for farming. Throughout the generations, “What actually holds us back in our quest to succeed as a nation?” remains the question without an answer. Among the masses in particular, the question of “Why do we always have to struggle so much to keep our heads above water?” is nothing new.
In recent years, the public has been stuck in social chaos and an environmental mess. The prime enemies of our community–corruption, selfishness and greed–are out of control. Criminal activities and crooked deals to exploit our society have risen sharply. Governments are responsible for putting into place measures to control social vices or things that spoil our way of life. Corruption in particular has always existed in public offices. In almost all public offices, citizens have to pay bribes to officials to be able to get what they want or need. Sadly, this has become part and parcel of our culture. Despite this pervasiveness, our governments never come up with any specific policy to fight this corruption. They simply ignore many immoral practices and fail to give the general public the knowledge they need to defend their rights. Our governments usually pass their term of office without enacting any significant reforms; they simply maintain the status quo. They leave many distressing situations affecting our community.
Often, the masses in our community grumble that change must come to lessen the economic hardships or improve the living conditions. In the same way, however, the Ghanaian public is also not willing to change the old habituated attitudes or enhance the thought and culture. Our governments seem to represent the people. Noticeably, however, they fail to seek the good of all. They come in their selfish and greedy interests and boost favouritism. Yet we continue to celebrate them in style. We admire those who represent us in our local authorities but steal our money meant for public projects. Ignoring our basic rights, we pay bribes to fellow citizens who serve us in various public offices. In effect, “We are victims of our own crime.”
Over the past year or so, I have come across quite a number of people who spoke their opinion saying, “From the look of what is going on now, another revolution would be appropriate.” Each time, I asked them if they understood what a real revolution means. I tried to explain that a real revolution is a move by the people, standing up for change. And this usually happens when citizens are all fed up with their current situation. In the practice of self-rule, the change people need usually comes from collective public demonstration. It usually serves as a demand for leaders to produce change. As a result, they are obliged to live up to the expectations of the people. It also serves as a reminder for leaders that their reign could suffer a premature end in failure. Encouraging soldiers to remove leaders is no option. Starting from the first republic, I suppose most Ghanaians have learnt from the past about such military interventions. Hopefully, the majority of us can now ascertain that despite all initial good intentions they failed to become the solution they promised to be.
Regarding our current self-governing practice, a good number of our population would say that we are in “political disorder” because we are experiencing the worst disorganization in our governing process. It is plain as the noses on our faces that our top leaders have collaborated to embezzle large portions of the nation’s funds, neglecting the people’s concerns. It is also apparent that those who manage our resources have found greater opportunities for siphoning funds into their own pockets. Following the same example, one fortunate set of citizens (members of our bureaucracy) have found the freedom to enrich themselves by exploiting public offices. This happens in almost all administrations, to the detriment of the defenceless masses.
As we struggle to achieve true development for the benefit of citizens and especially to set a good example for younger generations to follow, some people say they do not care what happens. Others assume the material properties they manage to secure through selfish, greedy and fraudulent means are enough to make their children happy when they are no more. And others decide not to be bothered because opportunities to snatch a part of public funds for their private financial gains are available to them. Such irresponsible and egocentric aims induce some citizens (including some powerful opinion, community and traditional leaders) to go along with this terrible system.
We live in a changing and challenging world. We need to realize that if culture within our organization or social setup does not change, nothing changes at all. And ultimately, this will continue to spoil our way of life and retard our social development. While we desire to build our nation into success, we should realize our main hindrances and know how to sort them out together. Let us bear in mind that tomorrow’s world exists for our children’s children. While we keep silent and watch, we should know that our children’s children will continue to suffer the same systematic failure in leadership that we are experiencing in our time. Remember, what counts in life is not the fact that you have lived, but the things you have done that make the lives of others different.
Another significant issue that raises concern in relation to our struggle to escape poverty or underdevelopment is our new spiritual direction. Questionably, almost our entire religious population has come to accept that the church is the proper route for meeting these important goals. Focusing chiefly on spiritual intervention, this new belief urges people to set their sights on the spiritual above the practical. It motivates people to enter prayer camps and spiritual centres to concentrate on “powerful prayers.” It teaches our religious masses to lie fallow and expect spiritual wonders to improve their deprived circumstances. Our vulnerable, needy and desperate religious masses looking for miracles to change their lives cling especially strongly to this belief. As the people long for a better life, success and prosperity, spiritual leaders who emerge as “miracle workers” or “second sighted” are seen as a “God-sent”, becoming the focus of attention.
Our new spiritual belief is questionable in the proper sense that it misleads our population regarding the plain truth of education as the key to human success. The church as the way to learn to live a sacred life, for the sake of eternal life in heaven in the end, does not necessarily reward economic prosperity. All across the developed world, no nation ever refers to the church or spiritual wonders as the key to its success. Unfortunately, the emergence of this new spiritual direction contradicting the original orthodox Christian doctrine misinforms us in the effort to fight poverty. In truth, it prevents us from understanding the difference between realistic and practical approaches to achieve these goals and religion to save our individual souls from destruction in the end. From a realistic point of view, this new spiritual belief undermines creativity and the search for the real opportunities ahead of us to improve our deprived conditions. Above all, it blinds the young people who represent the future of our nation to the power of education, scientific research and technological advancement, as the only true means of achieving sustainable development.
We are a deprived society depending on prosperous societies for all great achievements that have absolutely helped improve the quality of life and enhanced human dignity in an amazing manner. Our world’s developed societies (including our former colonial masters) do not attribute their success to religious belief. Certainly, they reveal the power of education, scientific knowledge and practical endeavour as the key to their advancement. Strikingly, they are those whose early missionaries introduced the Christian religion to our forefathers and still practice the original form of the religion. Far removed from our state of disorganization, mismanagement, lawlessness, lack of accountability, selfishness and greed, they generally adopt the virtues of integrity and dedication to their nations.
We not only look up to industrial nations for this wide range of modern products for human pleasure, we are “green with envy” to have them. We are eager to share everything prosperous societies have managed to achieve but are not willing to follow their realistic and practical course. Our society is impatient to have all those modern products for information technology, such as mobile phones, computers and laptops. Nevertheless, we never seem to ask ourselves how manufacturing all those fantastic social conveniences became possible. Contrary to our Christian teaching, our society is never willing to be content with our underprivileged conditions. From churches, our religious masses go home to hate their brothers and sisters home and abroad for not giving and sending them what they expect from them to solve their problems or fulfil their selfish aims. Above all, our religious population is second to none at thinking up lies to tell, with the intent of deceiving others to contribute to their needs.
Due to the domination of this new spiritual fanaticism, it is obvious that public education has fallen into the hands of spiritual leaders. Throughout our religious community today, any attempt to open families’ or the public’s eyes to this misleading spiritual fanaticism is like “trying to square the circle” or in other words, attempting something impossible. What makes it disturbing is that most of those men and women lack qualified educational or religious backgrounds. They operate churches solely on their “spiritual intuition” as a means to sell their spiritual services. Shamefully, many such opportunistic preachers preach from their narrow-minded views. They manipulate biblical doctrines in order to accomplish their financial aims. Due to erroneous religious teachings absorbed by our vulnerable, needy and desperate religious masses, our population has lost the true reason we go to church. We cannot depend on spiritual wonders or miracles to alleviate poverty or escape underdevelopment. This means that we really need to start somewhere. Certainly, so long as we settle in the belief of spiritual wonders for progress and impart this idea to our children, we will remain underdeveloped till the end of time.
Often, critical concerns emerge in our country involving our top leadership. Despite the gravity of some of these affairs, the Ghanaian public merely makes fun of things and brushes them off. We fail to realize that the destiny of our nation or a better life for present and future generations lies in the hands of our political leaders rather than our spiritual leaders. Therefore, we fail to stand up collectively to demand justice. A typical example of such concerns is the one hundred and fifty-eight million Ghana cedis affair. This huge amount of money can build and furnish a science class for the KNUST. It would help students exercise their God-given potentials to take part in experiments. With research, we can also join in manufacturing and develop innovations eventually. Besides the West, all those developing economies followed this realistic and practical approach. China did so and was able to join in manufacturing, to become the leading supplier with goods that we need in our markets at present.
Unbelievably, our top members, who call themselves “patriotic” leaders and “peacemakers”, collaborated to pay this huge amount of money to one man, supposedly for a contract awarded him. As the truth came to light, the man received this amount of money for payment for a nonexistent job. Behind closed doors, our top leaders and their party icons shared this amount of money among themselves, to fulfil their selfish interests. The contractor was only a “symbol of deception”. Quite often, when concerned citizens rise up to campaign against such corrupt practices of our political leaders, other citizens oppose them with attacks and insults. Publicly, such devotees refer to similar acts by previous leaders and deem it appropriate that successive leaders also do the same. Strangely enough, most of these diehard fans of leaders and political parties take no share of the money that our top leaders loot and share among themselves. Yet, in solidarity with them, they seem to be ready to raise arms to fight others over any criticism. If this is the perspective of our citizens, how do we ever arrive at the democratic change that we need? Unfortunately, this is the woe of our community.
It is evident that the offspring of many migrants to our country also claim citizenship. But in reality, such people cannot find their roots in our homeland. They simply cannot find love and loyalty for our dear nation. During elections especially, we experience disturbances in some parts of our country. When we look at things closely, we realize that there are certain types of citizens who engage in such disturbances. Apparently, their aim is to hurt their political opponents, causing them to suffer defeat. Shamefully, incumbent lawmakers fail to take any strong measures to deal with culprits because they know their acts support them in their burning desire to win elections.
They do things to incite riots because they know they have nothing to lose. Other citizens also inwardly lend their support for leaders or political parties based strictly on tribal lines and hatred for their political opponents. As we see such tribal connections causing distress in some parts of our country, is this not our doom?
The widespread belief in this church way to achieve our aims is obviously responsible for flexibility, stability and peace. Ignorance among the ordinary masses is the mainstay. Of course, our leaders benefit from this to cover up their failures, as it offers immense support and security for them despite all failures. This gives cause for some of our leaders to calculatedly reinforce this church way the ideal means to achieve progress. Therefore, they pay no heed to passing any legislation to protect our young people from brainwashing programmes by ignorant, opportunistic preachers.
Our society suffers massive malpractices that spoil our way of life. Our governments largely ignore them and make no efforts to tackle them for the betterment of present and future generations. Even so, we should have faith in God and trust that “God-sent’’ spiritual leaders in our midst will manufacture miracles to help us solve our problems. We should have faith that God will take care of our infrastructure and help us achieve our aims because we flock in churches to adore Him. But we never wake up in the morning to see any of our poor roads in any part of our country built by angels. In our leading state hospitals today, some patients have to sleep on the floor because there are insufficient beds and mattresses. The reality we face is that our government’s failure to use money to build roads or supply equipment means that many areas of our social system continue to deteriorate. In spite of constant powerful prayers led by supposed “God-sent” spiritual leaders, we still suffer the misery caused by traffic accidents due to poor roads. People die prematurely from preventable causes as a result of poor medical care.
The church is a place to worship God to reserve a place for our individual souls in Heaven. It does not oblige a collective effort, as we presume it to be. In support of this argument, the Bible does not tell us that humanity will appear before the judgment seat as a group, but rather individually. Therefore, worshipping God does not fetch a collective reward but a personal one. Let us protect children from internalizing dogmatic religious teachings delivered by ignorant, opportunist preachers. Let us help them to understand the true reason we go to church. They are the future leaders to redeem mother Ghana from this endemic spiritual belief that only hinders the power of education as the key to success in life but creates opportunities for financially motivated preachers.
Together, we can press for positive change in our self-rule practice, to improve deprived conditions in the long run. However, we can achieve this as long as we do not allow tribal sentiments and hatred to divide hearts. While we meditate for change in our nation building, we cannot deny this pervasiveness among some leaders and ordinary citizens. And this is an issue our lawmakers should be dealing with by now. Instead, some of them use their offices to pursue this kind of infighting. “United we stand, divided we fall.”
Joe Amo-Addae
Author of CORRUPT VISION