Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Tuesday, March 01, 2016
Pastor Mensah
Anamuah Otabil, General Overseer of International Central Gospel Church, says
the time has come for Ghanaians, especially the youth, to compel the ruling
elite to introduce policies that ensure that everybody’s dream is realized.
“We have to force
the politicians to think of us and to think of our lives and to think of our
future and to think of our dreams. And the only way to do that is for you to
start thinking not in party terms, but in policy terms, and making sure that
the laws that govern your industry favour you.”
Right Environment
Closing a youth
camp dubbed, ‘Springboard’ hosted by Albert and Comfort Ocran of Combert
Impressions last week, Pastor Otabil charged the youth to overlook political
parties in getting the leadership of the country to pursue policies that would
create conducive environment for businesses to thrive.
“The right
environment is not NPP or NDC,” he pointed out. “Parties don’t govern nations,
laws and policies govern nations. Go beyond party names and start examining
policies and demanding policies that will make you thrive,” he added.
Opposite Direction
Pastor Otabil, who
is the founder of arguably Ghana’s most successful private university - Central
University College – said, “The most frustrating efforts in life is that you
are trying to move but everything in the system is going against you in the
opposite direction.
“If we want to
create dreamers we must create a nation with dreams. If we want to create dreamers
in our nation then the laws of this nation must facilitate the dreams of people.
If we want to create dreamers then the policies we put in place must not lead
us in the opposite direction but must facilitate where we are going.”
Daring To Dream
He underscored, “Dreaming
is not just about you alone having the plan but also the environment you are
operating. It could be your nation, the
family, a job, an office that you work in. Whatever system you operate in, it
has to help you to get there.
“A person can be so
good but if he is planted in a wrong environment he is going to turn out so bad
and it has nothing to do with his ability or capacity. It has to do with the
environment he is planted in.”
He said the current
environment in the country is “killing the dreams of you men and young women,”
and queried, “How can people go to university and for years, not know what to
do and people with great potential not fulfill their potential?”
Staying For Success
Pastor Otabil said
it does not have to take people to travel outside the country before they can
succeed insisting, “We have to demand that in our own country, the sulphar that
poisons talents is removed so that you and I can stay here and succeed and have
a success story whether as musicians, as medical doctors, as engineers, as
footballers.
“Whatever we do, we
must succeed because we don’t have two lives. I don’t believe in reincarnation.
This is the final game! This is all you have. This is all I have. And if I
waste my time and my life, I am wasting my talent and my opportunities.”
Mediocrity
He observed, “The
challenge for nations like Ghana is not the challenge of talented citizens. It is the challenge of poisonous environment
- an environment that has been poisoned by ordinariness, by mediocrity and
sometimes by a clear agenda to destroy talent.
“How can a nation
be great when its systems are fighting the talents of its people? For a nation
to be great, its laws have to facilitate growth. You cannot overtax businesses
and kill them and hope they will survive at the same time. It doesn’t work that
way. If we want businesses to survive and thrive, we have to create an
environment for businesses to thrive.”
Impossible Scenarios
“If Mark Zuckerberg
was a Ghanaian and had the idea of facebook,
would his idea have thrived? If Steve Jobs had a great idea of the Apple and
was a thriving Computer Engineer in Kokomlemle, would he have built that world-class
brand? I don’t know but it seems to me all of us agreed it would have been
extraordinary for them to have succeeded. So what is the difference between
Mark Zuckerberg and you? Steve Jobs and you? It is not brains, it is the
environment!” Pastor Mensah Otabil stressed.
He wondered, “How
can one man (Zuckerberg) be richer than our own country? It’s an insult to our
intelligence. A man who wasn’t born during our independence is richer than all
of us put together!
“It is not funny to
me. It is annoying to me. It is an insult to me and my human potential and what
God created me to be able to achieve.”
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