There is a quiet truth many of us avoid confronting: Ghana is not failing us – we are failing Ghana.
For many decades, the dream has been the same. Leave. Escape. Find greener pastures. We complain—loudly and repeatedly—that “the system is broken.” We point to corruption, poor roads, weak healthcare, unreliable electricity, and ineffective institutions. And so, we leave.
And when we finally leave, we stay.
A few return. Most don’t.
Those who do return often come back only after retirement—after spending their most productive, energetic, and innovative years building other nations. Then they arrive home, expecting comfort, stability, and development… and yet, the complaints continue.
But here is the uncomfortable question:
Who was supposed to build Ghana while you were gone?
The Lie We Tell Ourselves
We convince ourselves that we “escaped hardship.” But what we truly escaped was responsibility.
The countries we admire today—those same places we run to—were not always like this. Their citizens stayed. They endured. They built. They sacrificed.
They did not abandon their systems; they fixed them.
While they were staying to develop their nations, we were leaving ours.
Today, we stand in long queues and pay thousands of dollars for visas—sometimes over $10,000—just for the opportunity to serve in jobs far below our qualifications.
A Generation Exported!
We have exported our strength—our youth, our intellect, our innovation—to other countries.
We spend our youthful exuberance abroad, helping to build systems that are not ours.
And when we are tired—when the energy is gone—we return home expecting a country that somehow developed in our absence.
But development does not happen in a vacuum.
It requires people. Committed people. Sacrificial people.
It requires you. I mean, you—my brother and sister.
The Contradiction
We complain that the system is corrupt, nothing is working, roads are bad, electricity is unreliable.
Yet, we remove ourselves from the very system we criticize.
You cannot abandon a house and expect it to maintain itself.
You cannot run from a problem and expect it to solve itself.
And you cannot leave a country and expect it to develop without its people.
A Call to Conscience
There is nothing wrong with traveling abroad—to study, to gain exposure, to grow.
But there is something deeply wrong with abandoning your country permanently during your most productive years, only to return when you have little left to give.
Ghana does not need your retirement.
Ghana needs your youth. Your energy. Your ideas. Your courage to stay—or to return early enough to matter.
The Hard Truth
If all the builders leave, who will build?
If all the thinkers leave, who will think?
If all the doers leave, who will do?
We cannot continue to complain about a system we refuse to participate in fixing.
The Choice Before Us
This is not a policy problem. This is a mindset problem.
Will we continue to escape? Or will we stay and build?
Ghana will become what we contribute to it.
Final Thought
The tragedy is not that Ghana is underdeveloped.
The tragedy is that many of the people capable of developing it are developing somewhere else.
By Dr Nurudeen Mohammed