The United Nations Youth Association-Ghana (UNYA-GH) joins Ghanaians home and diaspora to commemorate Ghana’s 66th Independence Day Anniversary. On this auspicious day, the UNYA-GH is calling on all especially the youth who form the most active majority of Ghana’s population to re-consider, re-align and re-affirm to the powerful, transformational and impactful values enshrined in the our National anthem and pledge.
In Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s words, “the forces that unite us are intrinsic and greater than the superimposed influences that keep us apart”. Today as then, these words echo across the Black Stars homeland.
Fellow Ghanaians, our national anthem is not simply a song played on special occasions but, an awakening melody stringed out of experiences and aspirations to inspire the sons and daughters of Ghana to boldly defend forever the cause of Freedom and of Right. We are admonished to fill our hearts with true humility, cherish fearless honesty, and resist oppressor’s rule with all our will and might forevermore.
The first President of the Republic of Ghana also said: “if by their fruits we shall know them, they must first grow the fruits.” Like the national anthem, our national pledge which is appropriately recited immediately after the national anthem is also not simply a rhetoric statement but, our individual and collective patriotic affirmation to faithfully honour Ghana and hold in high esteem our homeland. We boldly pledge absolute service to Ghana with all our strength and with all our hearts in recognition of our heritage won for us through the blood and toil of our fathers.
As the first country of sub-Sahara Africa to officially break the stiff-hand of colonialism and imperialism, Ghana, regardless of all our everyday huddles, we remain the beckon of hope and the gateway to Africa. Our First Republic President drew the intricate connections between all Africans when he on that remarkable day iterated that: “the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked-up with the total liberation of the African Continent”.
In the spirit of renewed national re-mobilization and re-education of both young and old Ghanaians and by extension Africans, the United Nations Youth Association-Ghana joins Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah and all the faithful sons and daughters of Ghana and Africa to chime our renewed affirmative action – “We face neither East nor West; We face forward”. We remind ourselves: “countrymen, the task ahead is great indeed, and heavy is the responsibility; and yet it is a noble and glorious challenge – a challenge which calls for the courage to dream, the courage to believe, the courage to dare, the courage to do, the courage to envision, the courage to fight, the courage to work, the courage to achieve – to achieve the highest excellencies and the fullest greatness of man. Dare we ask for more in life?”.
“Action without thought is empty. Thoughts without action is blind”. Fellow Ghanaians, 66 years on since our independence, it is time to have patriotic comrades who will seek the absolute welfare of every Ghanaian regardless of stratifications. We collectively need to put structures and measures in motion for the sustainable development of every sector of our country and the advancement of our people looking into the future.
From today, let us all remember to thoughtfully and dutifully sing the national anthem and say the national pledge. God bless our homeland Ghana and make our Nation great and strong!.
God bless United Nations Youth Association-Ghana (UNYA-GH)!
God bless Ghana!
God bless Africa!
Written by:
H.E WH Kobina Adomadzi Longdon
National Youth President
United Nations Youth Association-Ghana (UNYA-GH)