“Music should make you laugh, make you cry or make you think. If it doesn’t do one of those three things, then you’re wasting everybody’s time.” – Kenny Rogers
Petitions apart from demonstrations are favourite means of driving home a grief in Ghana. The grief may range from releasing some party faithful from prison to some paramount chief asking for one public infrastructure or the other, or some workers who don’t want the State Corporation they work with to be sold off and the beat goes on.
National Service is mandatory – NS Act 426, 1980 makes it so. Another service year has begun in earnest by graduates of various tertiary institutions across the length and breadth of the Motherland in various governmental and non-governmental agencies. However, there are issues that the NSS have deliberately turned a blind eye to and on all the occasions these issues have been raised, the issues fall on deaf ears of the NSS.
Umaru Amadu Sanda of Citi FM wrote an article, “National Service or National Suffering” published on ghanawe.com, October 17, 2010 about these issues. He discussed “square pegs in round holes policy” of the NSS that had always been justified and is still justified, and the unconcerned attitude of the NSS about graduate’s accommodation even as they’re posted to parts of Ghana they don’t know about nor have families there. A case in point, posting someone who had studied communication to teach at the basic level or posting someone to an organisation that does not need the services of service persons.
In evaluating any argument there’re always two issues to be considered: the quality of the reasoning and the truth of the premises. The issues raised by my mate were relevant; they exist, but the Secretariat keeps justifying or rationalising. Is it true, the National Service Secretariat justifies the “square pegs in round holes”? Yes, the secretariat does. Does the National Service Secretariat care about the accommodation issues of national service personnels before they start their service especially in regions away from their homes? No, the secretariat doesn’t.
As I write this piece, there’re personnels who have still not reported to their posts – no accommodation. The agency they’ve been posted to isn’t ready to assist either. This brings to the fore, what are the NASPA dues used for? There is supposed to be at least a transit quarters for service persons in each region, district or municipal areas, however, there’re few or non-existent.
The NSS can begin to seek for funding to solve this problem of graduates who have to pay exorbitant fees for accommodation only for a year. The issue about sending graduates to sectors they have no knowledge of must be looked at again. It’s an oddity. It’s improper for the career development of any young graduate. No justification whatsoever is enough for this trend.
Albeit, these issues prevail, all NSPs must think of how to make something out of nothing. There’s a quote, I saw somewhere, “we’ve done so much with so little that we can do anything with nothing”. The place of posting may be somewhere else in one obscure area of Ghana, go out there, and look out for how you can use all that you’ve learnt to better the lives of the people in one aspect of their lives or the other.
On this note, take a cue from Kenny Rogers’ song, “My petition”. The song is about a boy who went round collecting signatures for his petition to the President and this is a verse of it.
I said, “Son, sounds like a world
I’d like to live in”
And I signed his petition
He thanked me for my time
I headed back inside, grabbed my beer
An’ got back to the game
Thought by now that boy, he’s three doors down
Here I am just sittin’ round
Waitin’ on the world to change
An’ I thought, “Man, ain’t that a
Place I’d like to live in”
And I thank God for that boy
That’s out there fixin’
The world with his petition
Habits die hard. The story is told of a lady who lost her job due to her addiction to social media. She was caught busily surfing the internet and chatting on Facebook during productive hours. She was immediately dismissed. Although she was given the remainder of her salary of the subsequent months, she lost her job. Let’s watch our addiction and work on ourselves.
With this petition of mine, I wish all NSPs the best as they serve Mother Ghana.
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The author is a freelance journalist with interest in human and social development and sustainable development.