When the first president of Ghana made the declaration that "Ghana, our beloved country is free forever" it was surely a new beginning for Ghana. It was a beginning that gave dignity to the Ghanaian, a beginning that gave hope of a better and prosperous nation, devoid of poverty, conflicts, diseases and disunity. The question now is what has been the situation of the Ghanaian since then? What can be done to remedy our problems and project Ghana as truly the "Black Star of Africa"? These are the issues that we want to discuss in this article. Current situation Ghana has gone through difficult situations and there have been attempts and efforts by various leaders to fix our problems but our development is not getting faster as it should. Today, many country folks are wallowing in abject poverty and destitution. We seem divided today more than united on the day of independence. The euphoria that greeted our independence has waned or dimmed. Much as in general there is relative peace in Ghana, the theatre of inter and intra ethnic conflicts in some of our regions, leading to the loss of innocent lives and destruction of property should not be tolerated. In spite of the improved situations of intermarriages, many are those, who, because of their own political self-interest, have taken advantage of the multi-ethnic nature of our country and are playing on the ethnic card to divide the people. This is reinventing the colonial tactics of divide and rule. There is much talk about economic indicators showing significant theoretical improvement but the concrete living situation of the majority of the people shows otherwise. Our environment is not something good to write home about. Most of our surroundings are filthy and even the attempt to make our cities clean are resisted and that make the efforts of those in charge meaningless. These good intentioned people do not only lose courage in the face of resistance to the change they want to bring about, but are characterised as enemies of the people. Our gutters are filled and choked with debris and our rivers polluted. Trees on river banks are cut down and bushes are burnt, leading to serious environmental consequences. Many people do not have regard for the environment, so we surely have to correct our attitudes on this matter. It is no wonder that we have not been able to fight against malaria and other diseases in our country. Also, no wonder we continue to suffer the lack of power because the Volta River is dry. The influx of young people to the major cities of Accra, Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi and other places in Ghana, and the lack of employment of many of our young people have brought about increase in anti-social activities. It is sad to read about daylight prostitution in some parts of our country. This is in the era of HIV/AIDS pandemic. It is even scarier, the reports of contract killings and armed-robbery taking place in our country, despite all the security efforts being made to curb the situation. The question is: What is happening to our values, what, is happening to our country? There is certainly the need to double our efforts to check these anti-social acts among Ghanaians, and foreigners who are taking the hospitality, the calm and peaceful environmental situation in Ghana as our weakness to perpetuate their criminal activities in Ghana. A new path We cannot conclude the litany of problems we are facing in our country. It is for this reason that we need to chart a new course, a new programme and effect a concrete and workable change in Ghana and offer positive hope to Ghanaians. We want a new Ghana as envisioned by our founding fathers: a boisterous economy; a people not only seeking and working to live in unity but a people united as one people tied together by a common destiny; a people respecting law and order and upholding justice and fairness and respecting the rights of the individual no matter how low or high, how poor or rich; and also respecting the equality of the genders and making everyone feel secured and protected. One may ask: If we can do what we have stated above, if we can improve on the holistic life of the Ghanaian, since much effort have been made by some past leaders, and we are either making marginal progress or the situation gets much more difficult each time and day. This is not something that cannot be done as some may say they look idealistic. In reality, this should be our aspiration and we need to work hard towards achieving them. What makes our situation unacceptable is the catalogue of the resources we have in Ghana (gold, manganese, bauxite, diamond, salt, timber, etc,) and to say that we are poor or that majority of the people live in abject poverty is a big disgrace. When we look at the resources and capacity of Ghanaians, it is a shame to live without regular supply of electricity for almost a year. This is even in a situation where not all households have access to electricity. It is a breach of our dignity not to have regular supply of potable water to every household, have our environment littered around and gutters choked and breading mosquitoes which result in malaria. In most cases, we do not do practically much to address the situation and only talk about it all the time, and interested mainly in the statistics of malarial cases in a period. May be that will bring in more donor funds to line the pockets of some people. We should not countenance that many of our people live in abject poverty in a country where every land is fertile and can grow virtually anything that can be sowed on a land. When one goes to Israel and sees the kind of land they have and how the people are able to cultivate crops ,to feed themselves, then we would say that they offer a big challenge to us in Ghana as to how useful we can put our arable land to use for increase in productivity. Again, it is easier in Ghana to breed any animal and poultry as it is demonstrated by small-scale farmers. There should not be hunger in a land where there can be plenty of food at a season and all that is needed is to invest heavily in agriculture and also embrace the industrial technology as to how to process and make our products lasting for use by the people and also for export. Small-scale farmers should be supported to expand their enterprise as their success will entice many others, especially the youth, to go into the formal sector of agriculture. We need to do something urgently to make Ghana a new GHANA. As we go into elections this year, many politicians will come with their manifestos and convince the people that they can fix our problems. This is good, since in every nation we need leaders who play a significant role in transforming the destiny of the people, just as Dr Kwame Nkrumah and others led us into independence. We cannot, therefore, downplay the leadership factor. But we need a leader who will translate the wealth of the nation into making the life of the people better. Source: Rev. Fr. Eric Oduro Wiafe/Daily Graphic