Designating new regions in Ghana and re-awakening the railway industry may not be enough to become a Legacy President.
More than the last 50 years of Presidential leadership in Ghana has missed the point of what it is to become and to birth a legacy that outlives generations.
For they did not focus on more than flesh and blood, more than profit but individual gain; believing that the audience was not discerning enough to notice fantastic mimicry of observed leadership behaviour.
We have become a leadership generation that misses the soul and the essence of pouring out until the end. Pouring out more than campaign promises and a false sense of nationalism.
For the audience, be it illiterate; be it poor and be it misinformed by 24-hour news cycles, still know the difference between that which is bourn from flesh and blood and that which represents to its core the highest office.
For a Legacy President no longer remains like us mere mortals but becomes a symbol of excellence, hope, perseverance and true service to a nation through action; engagement; sitting with the people and understanding their needs as well as rolling out visionary agendas.
Mimicry will not suffice for leaders are disciplined and turn their back on youthful compulsions that keep them from real engagement with their people, their culture and their promises.
Some would argue that this is Ghana, the people will remain the same and no one can change them.
Those people should remember what our democracy was founded on and how it is the collective that moves the heartbeat of a nation.
So any leader who decides to arise or re-awaken (after a long slumber) to guide that heartbeat will reignite the fabric of society; our ideals; aspirations and ability to transform every patch of this land into something greater than a place that is by and large under-developed and poor.
The Mind’s Eye of a President is developed even before they get into office and continues well after they become President.
Under the leadership of a Legacy President, the nation suspects that they may be in the presence of greatness.
For the essence of that leader manifests in his or her speech, their sincerity, execution and engagement, built from within and capable of transforming and inspiring the collective and the individual so they themselves elect themselves to rise and be part of the change in ideals, execution, nationalism and hope for a better nation.
One President cannot do the work of a nation.
Their truth, however, their inspiration, their ability to meet the people (if understood from a sincere place) will awaken the dream that was Ghana.
For dreams have a funny way of inch by inch materializing into form when prodded, when seduced, when coaxed into reality by the belief of the people in that which is leadership that comes from within and every once in a while.
Only then will the collective have a changed mind of what it is we Are and what it is we can Become as a nation.
Arise.
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By: Amanda Akuokor Clinton Esq.
Msc. In African Politics (SOAS)
