It looks all the way like an innovative means of solving the graduate unemployment problem. When President John Dramani Mahama urged newly-inducted graduates in the country to think of setting up their own businesses, he was directing those who have benefitted from higher education to make themselves useful, and help to get their less fortunate ones off the scrap-heap of unemployment.
At the graduation of 2,575 students from the University of Professional Studies Accra, President Mahama said by becoming independent and productive through their own initiatives, the youth, particularly graduates, would become less dependent on government.
“You have the ability to create jobs yourself,” the Head of State told the students who are taking their first steps into the real world. In a society, where a very large percentage of the youth are classified unemployed, the President’s speech is understood to urge the students to direct their passion and education acquired into setting up their own businesses and employing others, instead of depending on the state to offer them employment.
The occupant of Government House is reported to have said that the government he heads has provided the framework for youth entrepreneurship to thrive, citing the Youth Enterprise Support programme as one of those schemes conceived by the government to aid the youth to stand on their own two feet.
Ordinarily, every human being would like to set up his or her own business. But the mechanism to aid such a venture should be available. It is unfortunate, but this administration especially, has built more castles in the air than actual structures on the ground.
The Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency especially, was conceived as a mechanism to aid the youth gain entrepreneurial skills as a means of establishing their own business. In the end, it became a conduit pipe for state officials and party apparatchiks to connive with service providers to fleece this country of funds and other scarce resources.
Apart from the huge risk involved in seeking to establish one’s own as a business concern, lack of resources is a major disincentive for the youth to branch into setting up their own businesses.
It is becoming crystal clear that under the Mahama administration especially, politics has become the shortest route to fame and riches. The pay structure and the patronising nature of public office holding aside, politics has long departed from providing public service. It is now the main route to join the crème de la crème of this society.
Four years ago, with the 2012 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections engaging the attention of hard-pressed Ghanaians, news broke out that Deputy Minister of Information (now at the Education Ministry), Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, visited his constituency, and on his return to Accra, sent his driver to the car wash.
It emerged that the Deputy Minister, who prior to his ministerial appointment had never held any paid job before, had apparently left a whopping GH¢25,000 in hard cash in the car, after a rendezvous in his constituency.
Ordinarily, the state should have led in an enquiry into how the Deputy Minister came by that largesse, to the extent of leaving it in a car meant for the car wash.
Like many things involving party big-wigs, the State of Ghana was not interested. In other words, party members could play with as much cash as they liked, no one was going to ask them to account.
It is this attitude of the state and its governance system that has dampened the spirit of the average Ghanaian youth, The Chronicle would like to submit.
We are unable to gauge the mood of the President and his advisors. But this patronising attitude towards party apparatchiks, who are clearly milking this country dry, has lowered the can-do spirit among Ghanaian youth especially.
It is not for nothing that this country has an association holding unemployed graduates together. It is a sign of hopelessness that a group of young men and women, who have successfully undergone the stress of educating themselves at the university level, would consign themselves to the scrap-heap of unemployment.
We believe it is good to urge those who have trained at huge costs to the nation, to make use of their training to become useful to themselves and society. But, as they say literally, soldiers do not move on empty stomachs.
The President’s admonition would have to be backed by the concrete provision of the necessary structures and tools to get the Unemployed Graduates Association of Ghana, for instance, to be dissolved. That would not happen when state resources necessary to equip the youth are squandered by party apparatchiks, with government officials looking the other way.