Sometime in 2011, I had been worried about this beautiful country in the Western part of Africa and Ghana to be precise, how a beautiful country blessed with all the natural resources highly sought after by the developed world in the west for their industrial development but this Western African country could not harness these resources to benefit the 31 million people God had placed in this geographical spot in the world map. On this fateful night, as I laid in my bed and kept pondering over how the people in this location would get a sense of belonging and think of harvesting or exploiting these resources to benefit even the foetal in the womb, I drummed up the idea of GHANAMINDSET. Ghana was birthed on 6th March,1957. There had been a lot of struggles and phases until then. Our history tells us of the Portuguese arrival in the Coast of the present day Ghana in 1471 and introduced the batter trade of exchanging salt, gun powder and some minor European products in exchange for our Gold and other interested products.

They built Castles in Elimina and Axim and they were later followed by the Danes ,the Dutch and other minor European powers and eventually the imperialist Great Britain would enter and by 1867, they have annexed all the territory from the North to the South and the Gold Coast had become a British colony.

We must remember that we had gone through Slave Trade when tribal leaders in the land, which would later be referred to as the Gold Coast had faced wars in search of arable land. We also must remember that unlike the present day United Nations charter on Human Rights where prisoners of wars are not harmed but kept in humane condition until negotiations between the warring factions had reached settlement and such prisoners are exchanged and given their freedoms. That was not the case in the 16th century. Then, all captured prisoners of war were traded in as commodities. Assuming one powerful nation had captured prisoners of war from their opponents, they became the property of the powerful nation and were retrained for war purposes or whatever the nation that captured them would choose to do with them. In the midst of this, the Arabs from the North of Africa with their Arabic connections in the Middle East, became interested in the Prisoners of war which the African, tribal leaders were willing to sell. In the long run, these bought slaves were sold to the Europeans and the British, Portuguese, Danes, Dutch and later the French saw how easy and cheap they could get these slaves, they all came together to buy “US” as cheap commodities on the world market and sent to Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean’s to work on their plantations.

As I lay awake all night thinking about what had happened to us from the 17th century and the colonisation that came to take any liberties we had and brought us under the yoke of imperialism and colonialism, I began to wonder what had become of our mindset. In each stage of our struggle to find space and live as people created in the image of God, there was a POWERFUL entity standing in our face with weapons we could do nothing against. Each phase and stage brought us a NEW MINDSET. They all had their ideologies they wanted to push into our throats and our brains.

Those our fore fathers born under the yoke of Slave Trade were given the mindset of fearing the TRIBAL chiefs and their surrogate European powers. How they could outwit and out smart them in order to evade being captured and sold into slavery. In such environment your freedoms were curtailed and you dared not oppose anybody so rich and powerful who had some form of power. Enter colonialism, just like the slave trade, this time the COASTAL people on the belt from Accra to Axim ruled. They teamed up with the Europeans and would buy goods from the Europeans at cheap prices and sold to those from the Middle belt at exorbitant prices. Those from the Middle belt would not have direct dealings with the Europeans but our fathers in the Coast, who had been picked and trained by the Europeans, spoke to these wicked and selfish minded business people from Europe. This would show you that another MINDSET would be formed. A mindset of not trusting your fellow African in the Coast, who now saw themselves as superior to you from the Middle belt of our land. If you were not from the coast, you were not recognised as a wise human being.

Enter the politics leading to our independence, we are going to get another class of MASTERS, and this time the educated elite. A few minority of our population who happened to be around political power when the British colonial masters ruled us. All these were in the Civil Services and Public Service like the Army and the Police Service. What would they do with their new acquired status? They would introduce another MINDSET of favouring their families, friends, classmates. As we grapple with gaining our independence and impending departure of the colonialists, the map had been drawn of those who would occupy the expected vacuum that would be created by the mass departure of the British back to their shores. This had been mapped out.

Then 1957,we now have our independence and the Elite Class of politicians emerged and as history had taught the world, the POLITICIAN hates sharing, The politician if they happened to be AFRICAN know only one thing. GRAB it all with all the hands you have and where you cannot grab alone bring in your family members and make sure nothing is left as leftovers for society. THE MINDSET OF SUPERIORITY AND CORRUPTION.

Look at the political landscape of Ghana, These members are less than 500,000 so called politicians and what MINDSET have they set for the 31 million Ghanaians? MINDSET OF IGNORANCE. The average Ghanaian of the ages of 30 to 50 years cannot read just a one page literature or a letter. They cannot know how many regions we have in Ghana. How many cities we have in Ghana. Many will struggle to name the capitals towns of our regions. What is the MINDSET of ignorance? It started by the proponents of the so called revolution in the late 70s and during this time, there was this long term plan that, should Ghana return to civilian rule, it would be difficult for them to win power, They had strategically identified their strongholds which would likely help them win any future elections and to achieve that, subjects like : Civic Education, Social studies and History should not be taught at the BASIC levels of our education system. Until 2017, how many Ghanaians were fortunate to be educated beyond the Basic levels of our Education structure? The Ghanaian Child had been deprived of knowing the history of Ghana from 1471 to 1979. Which means they would not know anything about the Sir Garnet Wolseley War. Yaa Asantewaa war, The Akatamanso war? How Osei Tutu the first was killed and who killed him? But the Ghanaian was taught about one JJ Rawlings and the time he staged a coup and became the defacto leader of Ghana.

The Ghanaian for no fault of theirs has been left with so many forms of MINDSETS and nobody in Ghana since the advent of Slave trade, colonialism, independence struggle, post independence and the era of coup upon coup and the present democratic dispensation, sat us down to tell us we are ONE PEOPLE, And God in his own time, has brought Apostle Eric Nyamekye, Chairman of the Church of Pentecost to spearhead the RESETTING THE GHANAIAN MINDSET. Apostle Eric Nyamekye, I have looked for this for a long time and it makes me proud that we have a SON of Ghana, commissioned by God at such a time to bring confidence into the Ghanaian. We have systematically been abused since 1471 when the Portuguese set foot on our soil and compounded by the tribal wars, interspersed with colonialism, independence struggle, post independence syndrome, staging of coups to topple governments and dysfunctional winner take it all democratic dispensation of today.

The Chairman and the Church of Pentecost should be supported to help heal the wounds and the scars, Our fore fathers fought and died and went, the generations after them came and tried their best but through it all no leaders tried to remove all the fragmented MINDSETS LEFT IN THEIR WAKE. In this 21st Century, Ghana cannot identify with what the world renowned Psychologists have Identified as the GROWTH MINDSET which is built on BOLDNESS and the “I CAN DO SPIRIT”, As the Asian nations, equally colonised by the same colonial masters have moved away from the FIXED MINDSET of taking instructions from a superior power and doing what THEY want you to say and do, the Ghanaian is sitting on the same colonial mentality, The Fixed Mindset. The Ghanaian is deteriorating very fast and it is timely that the Chairman has identified our lack of nationalism and patriotism and is working hard to address that. Apostle Eric Nyamekye, in any society where there is large percentage of the population of low level educated people, their language is INSULTS but that should not deter us for doing what is right for society. We shall write and speak about all the causes of why Ghana is being destroyed by the Ghanaian Politicians, but we shall never be silent and look on unconcerned as ignorance is killings our people. In TEN YEARS TIME, Ghana will be dominated and controlled by those who are not Ghanaians but have the GROWTH MINDSET from outside our shores but seen the void CREATED BY OUR FIXED MINDSET, These are people with revolutionary GROWTH MINDSET built on the strength of Handwork, discipline, the I can do SPIRIT and attitude that sets high goals and achieve those goals.

The recent WORLD INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT (IQ) table places our beloved Ghana at Position 186 out of 195 countries as amongst the nations with the lowest Intelligent Quotient in the world. First Five countries with the HIGHEST IQ in the world are all from Asia. The First FIVE are the following.

COUNTRY PERCENTAGE IQ POSITION IN THE WORLD

Japan 106.48 1

Taiwan 106.47 2

Singapore 105.89 3

Hong Kong 105.57 4

CHINA 104.1 5

THE TEN NATIONS WITH THE LOWEST IQ IN THE WORLD

Ghana 58.2 186

Ivory Coast 58.2 186

Guinea 53.5 188

Nicaragua 52.7 189

Gambia 52.6 190

Cape Verde 52.5 191

Guatemala 47.7 192

Sierra Leone 45.1 193

Liberia 45.1 193

Nepal 42.1 195

Some selected African countries;

Libya (African First) 80.92

Tunisia 79.22

Sudan 78.87

Chad 78.87

Seychelles 78.76

Senegal 77.37

Comoros 77.07

Madagascar 76.79

Uganda 76.42

Egypt 76.32

Algeria 75.1

Tanzania 74.95

Burkina Faso 73.8, Mozambique 72.5,Burundi 72.09,Niger 70.82……………South Africa 68,87……….and 10 nations before Nigeria at 67.76.

(Source:worldpopulationreview.com) 2024)

My Profile: Founder of Ghanamindset (www.ghanamindset.com) Born in 1952 and Member of the Church Pentecost of the PIWC in Milton Keynes)