How I wish we have a professional SECURITY architecture in Ghana so that our CORRUPT Police Service will be turned into a Professional outfit. My first encounter with the Ghana Police was in 1969 at Sekyedomase, we had lost our grandmother so my eldest brother, Sgt Boakye R.O. an army non commissioned officer attended from Kumasi. There was a minor altercation between the families that got out of hand. My brother who just played the role of a peacemaker, ended up in cell because the aggrieved faction had paid Police to arrest him. It would take a great deal of negotiations before the Police would listen to our side of the upheaval by then he had been kept overnight at the station. Apart from the intransigence of the Police, we incurred a lot of unnecessary expenses. These are our supposedly peacemakers, protectors of citizens, their rights and their property.

The Ghana Police Service was a professional force prior to independence and even throughout the reign of our first President, Kwame Nkrumah. and gone are the days we could walk into any Police Station, make a report and the Police would offer us protection and investigate whatever complaint one had brought to the station. When Ghana was a one party dictatorship under Kwame Nkrumah, you could not influence the Police on any criminal issue and they worked as a team for the welfare and well being of all meaning Ghanaians. Was it not the same Ghana Police Service that we reported those who spoke ill of Kwame Nkrumah during the young pioneer days? Did we not report those who failed to stand attention when our national anthem was played?

Immediately after the 1966 Coup, the Ghana Police Service changed. They put self above the STATE. They complained of poor employment benefits, accommodation, resources and tools to work with. All over the world, the Police Service face the same challenges. Take the public sector pay in any nation and you would realize that the public sector is never well paid but why do people want to work in those service? God the creator gave us skills and drive and in the developed world, nobody is forced into the POLICE SERVICE as it is in Ghana. United, France, Canada, USA, Germany, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and even close by South Africa, All these NATIONS Policemen and women are enlisted by the PASSION,DESIRE AND DRIVE in the prospective interested person desiring to die for our homeland. You do not go to be a Policeman or woman just because you cannot get any job to do.

In Ghana, sensitive and strategic positions all over the public sector is treated anyhow. What scrutiny is in place when recruiting a Policeman or woman? What phycological tests and assessments are there? What background checks are made and who makes them? How are they enlisted? You are recruiting dedicated men and women who should be suited to the profession of a Policeman or woman and it is WHOM YOU KNOW. How much money changes hand from the time the process is initiated until training begin? We sit in Ghana and all we do is talk, talk and talk and you come to realise that 24hours is too small or short for the Ghanaian. I am not a psychological scientist but I can reckon that the actual productivity of every public sector employee in Ghana, cannot be more than 2hours a day or in any given week, the workforce in the Public sector is about 10hours from Monday to Friday. The average in Europe and the developed world is between 35 to 40hours a week.

We fail to be productive so how do we raise the required resources to grow the GDP and thus create wealth enough for the public sector pay to rise and thus raise standards of living. The Ghana Police service by the virtue of the arms they wield, have assumed they would rather work against the national interests as opposed to own self interests and their superiors interest. They wake up in the morning and the plan is not going after criminals but rather working with the criminals for kickbacks. They mount road blocks and even the child in the womb knows what they do. We have all known this but have we as a nation said: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH? What is happening now to the Police where criminals are attacking them may be the results of their own clandestine operations with these Galamsayers and criminals.

Nobody in Ghana is well paid. The Policemen and women made a choice to serve Ghana and they must live up to that expectation and serve. They must stop extorting money from the citizens and criminals They were not enlisted to become a law unto themselves but SERVE Ghana with devotion and dedication. The time has come for Ghana to change the recruitment into the various Security service. You charge them money to get them into the Army ,Police, Immigration where do you expect them to raise the money to pay back? We have joined the civilized world so Ghana must behave alike. We need to change the training and recruitment regime. Let all those agencies be open to those born with PASSION,DESIRE and DRIVE to be recruited or enlisted.

How the Ghana Police Service treated me in 1973. I was academically brilliant during my elementary school days. From 1967 to 1970, I was successful for those FOUR consecutive years in the Common Entrance examination but I did have anyone to take me to Secondary school, I ended up working at Kusi Oil Palm Research Institute. In 1973,I wanted to be enlisted into the Police service so was offered the chance to go to Akim Oda to write the recruitment examination and out of the FORTY CANDIDATES that wrote the test, I was number two. They gave me a letter to go to the Police Depot in Accra and I went to Accra alright ,reported to those I had asked to report to and only God knows when they are going to write to me to report for training.

What is MINDSET?  I would like us to take a  look at a WATCH and how it works. Right from manufacture the watch has been set to work and as soon as it is purchased from the shop, its work has begun, it will work: tick, tick, tick nonstop until the owner decides otherwise. In the past the Swiss watches did not operate on BATTERIES, all one needed to do was to “wind it first thing in the morning and the watch has energy to work for the next twenty four hours. However, modern watches now have batteries and once the battery still has energy,all the mechanisms in  the watch will work perfectly well.

Therefore, one can see from this SIMPLE exercise that the WATCH (CLOCK) runs on   batteries for us to be able operate timeously. What about the Human Brain? Do we need to operate on batteries? And if on batteries. what type of batteries? You must realise that anytime one talks of the MINDSET, reference is being made to the Brain and how it works. The Biblical view is that our perfect God originally, having created us in His image, wanted our brains to work perfectly according to his purpose and plan. Once Satan was allowed access in the garden of eden and our (Brains) Mind became corrupted, it has been subject to many manipulations by so called POWERFUL personalities in public life like the imperialists,politicians,teachers, preachers in our time…….!

Our brains are set just lket the watch. As soon as the child is born and they take the first oxygen on earth, their brains are activated and they are set to work non-stop until the day of death when the oxygen is cut off. Therefore, to talk of the mindset, we are referring to how our brains work. In the past researchers never considered the brain as of any importance to spend time and resources to study how they work and it is the reason why in Africa as soon as a person shows any signs of fatigue in the brains they are cast out in  society as Mentally challenged. –they are mad. Modern studies on the brains and thus how the mind works have come up with ideas and suggestions on such matters that bother the brain such as  depression and other psychological problems could be treated and people lead normal lives

.Mindsets are beliefs—beliefs about yourself and your most basic qualities. Think about your intelligence, your talents, your personality. Are these qualities simply fixed traits, carved in stone and that’s that? Or are they things you can cultivate throughout your life?  Mindset is a simple idea discovered by world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck in decades of research on achievement and success—a simple idea that makes all the difference. She postulates that there are two kinds of Mindsets.Carol Dweck has come up with two type of mindsets: The Fixed Mindset and the Growth mindset

People with a fixed mindset believe that their traits are just given. They have a certain amount of brains and talent and nothing can change that. If they have a lot, they’re all set, but if they don’t that is it. So people in this mindset worry about their traits and how adequate they are. They have something to prove to themselves and others. In this category you get people who always complain and blame others when things do not go their way. Efforts is not part of their setup, but they live a life of chance, you will  often hear them say: If God permits, I will be rich someday, they live a life of hope, like waiting for something to happen, from where nobody can tell.

People with fixed mindset are most of the time miserable to be around because they don’t know anything about reaching their potential, to them whatever come their way, they deserve it, they don’t have to put in  any effort at all. What happens to them most of the time: Poverty

People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, see their qualities as things that can be developed through their dedication and effort. Sure they’re happy if they’re brainy or talented, but that’s just the starting point. They understand that no one has ever accomplished great things—not Mozart, Darwin, or Michael Jordan—without years of passionate practice and learning. People with Growth Mindset understand that until the day they die they would not accomplish their goal. To them, there is no limit to the heights they can scale, they are always looking for new ways of achieving things and as soon as one goal is achieved, they will embark upon new one. They are setting goals all the time and they make sure they are all attained. To the person with the Growth Mindset, there is  no rest as long as they can breathe, every time is an opportunity to do new things.

You can therefore see the world is what it is today because the pace setters never rested, as soon as one invention had taken place they thought of the next one, thus the strides in science and technology all came about because of those with Growth Mindset. (Excerpts from Carol Dweck.)

We at Ghanamindset believe that OUR minds like the watch were set during the colonial.imperialist rule to suit our colonisers. We are programmed pre-independence to behave the way that suited all those who colonised us. They used so many weapons and strategies to achieve that purpose. They told our public and civil servants that their wages would be waiting for them in heaven so they were paid peanuts. As they took our Gold, diamonds,bauxite, manganese,timber and every conceivable viable economic resource, we needed to wait until we die. The major cause of poverty and our gravitation towards low standard of living and development, stem from that mentality. Making the White Europeans  and everything foreign Prosperous  but it is good for the LAND owner, the African poor.

We need to rediscover our GROWTH MINDSET TO OVERCOME POVERTY, Ghanaians join me and  let’s work towards changing our mindset.

Author: Kofi Owusu-Ansah

(Co-Founder,Ghanamindset Institute, ww9.discussghana.com, www.ghanamindset.com ) 2011