General Overseer of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), Pastor Mensa Otabil, has admonished Ghanaians to rise up and demand what is best from the state.
Dr. Otabil says Ghanaians should resist the temptation of being content with the supply of what he calls minimal goods and services from the state.
Speaking at a book launch in Accra, Dr. Otabil asked Ghanaians not to settle for less.
Everything annoys me now
“I’m not an old man but the older I get, the more annoying everything becomes. Because you ask yourself when this thing is every going to end, we move from one stage of deterioration to the other and we are supposed to appreciate it and love it. We can’t love it, we can’t just be happy because a road has been tarred.”
We can’t just be happy because we didn’t have electricity now we have electricity. We can’t be happy with minimals, we want maximals, we want the best and not the least. The citizens must have appetite for better because what happens is that, when you get pushed down, you get settled for being pushed down,” he added.
State must not monopolize everything
In his view, the state has practically monopolized every aspect of individual lives, urging Ghanaians to be responsible for themselves irrespective of what the state does or does not do.
“There’s too much impact of the state in the lives of the people…we have to get to the point where it’s not the state running the country, it’s the people running the country, its entrepreneurs running the country, its businessmen [running the country].”
Dr. Otabil insisted that “the state should get out of hospitals, the state should get out of the schools, the state should get out because they mess up everything they get involved in and get individuals to run the place.”
It’s amazing doctors going on strike
Pastor Otabil said “isn’t it amazing when Doctors go on strike, state doctors, state nurses, and they shut down the whole health system because there’s no hospital in Ghana – private hospital – that employs 20 doctors?”
“The state has monopolized everything. For whatever purpose, they have hijacked the country from the citizens. And it’s going to take entrepreneurs like you to wrestle with the state and take back from them what belongs to us the people and build our nation the way we want it to be built, and when we do that, then politicians will not be as effective controllers of the destiny of the people as they have become now, because as it is now, they determine how everything runs but it’s going to take businessmen like you and I to make the difference.”
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By:citifmonline.com/Ghana