Ms Josephine Nkrumah, Chairperson of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) has said the Commission would be streamlining its programmes to fuse in Ghanaian values teaching to ensure that children and the youth have a sense of belonging to the country.
Ms Nkrumah said their programmes, which included constitutional week, citizenship week, democracy lecture, social auditing programmes, civic education clubs and dialogue series, will be anchored in values saying handling indiscipline, corruption and many others all depended on the values inculcated into the younger ones.
She said this during an NCCE/National Security project on national cohesion and inclusive participation governance for members of the Ashaiman Municipal Inter Party Dialogue Committee (IPDC).
The day’s workshop was on the theme: “Empowering Ghanaians to stand for national cohesion and inclusive participation.”
Answering a question on the increasing indiscipline among students some of whom vandalize school properties and threatens people in leadership, she said “what is happening among the youth is frightening, they have lost their sense of direction in everything.”
She added that they have become like an untrained army that was waiting to be unleashed on Ghanaians and therefore called on parents, care givers, teachers, and other stakeholders to instil right Ghanaian values into the children and youth.
She said failure on the part of stakeholders to guide the youth now would mean, they would grow thinking that they could use violence and dubious ways to get whatever they decided to have without considering the consequences.
Ms Nkrumah said gone were the days when a child belonged to the community making it easy for neighbours to guard a child who might be going wayward, regretting that currently parenting had become difficult as every adult was working leaving the children to be on their own and therefore had the liberty to explore bad things.
“We need to make time for our youth, responsible adults are carefully nurtured from childhood. They don’t happen by chance. Don’t think paying school fees and providing three-square meals is enough.”
She stressed that losing the country’s values among the youth meant losing the future and therefore reiterated that parents, stakeholders and Ghana as a whole must be intentional in catering for children both their biological ones and others they got into contact with.
“We must go back to the basic to re-engineer our senses, let’s recognize that our security is tied to the values the children have,” she added.
Mrs Lucille Hewletts Annan, Greater Accra Regional NCCE Director, speaking on the need to promote peace and dialogue, advised the general public to make use of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) to settle issues.
Mrs Annan said it was good to use the court to settle issues, but it was much better to use ADR to solve non-criminal cases as that could help maintain and preserve relationships.
She said Ghanaians must encourage each other to dialogue and use ADR services, saying when people do not have money and patient to go through the court process, they resort to violence.
Superintendent Osman Alhassan, Ashaiman District Police Commander, talking on the Public Order Act and Community Surveillance, said public event organizers such as demonstrations must inform police on their intentions in accordance with the law.
Supt. Alhassan explained that by informing the police, the organizers would then be met to consider the routes, and any possible security threat to the public as well as the demonstrators.
He said it was an offence not to inform the police, adding that refusal to notify the police and participating in an event that police had not been notify on was punishable by a fine of 25 penalty units, or up to one imprisonment when found guilty by the court.
Touching on personal safety, he advised the public against displaying their valuables in the car as that often attracted criminals to break in, adding that non fortified doors must also be reinforced by bracing its back as research showed that most armed robbers often attacked housed through the kitchen door which was often not strong.
Ms Gifty Agyeiwaa Badu, Ashaiman NCCE Municipal Director, said the Inter Party Dialogue Committee was formed by the Commission as a result of the tension that arose in the 2008 general elections, and therefore it deemed it necessary to form a committee similar to that of the IPAC to resolve issues that might trigger the peace of the country.
Ms Badu added that the IPDC’s engagements were also used to calm tensions during the 2012 general elections saying it was also aimed at deepening existing collaborations between the NCCE, EC, Political Parties, Youth, Security Agencies, District Assemblies, Traditional Leaders, Media and Disable community among others.
