RE: Ghana does not need a visionary leader ....

‘IMANI - Ghana does not need a visionary leader, but an effective leadership.’
A response

On myjoyonline.com is a story that Mr. Franklin Cudjoe, Executive Director of IMANI Ghana asserts that Ghana does not need a visionary leader, but an effective leadership (see http://news.myjoyonline.com/politics/201103/62596.asp). I must say that I agree with Franklin that Akofo Addo's call for a visioned leadership is a debate worth having. I also agree with some of Franklin’s assertion that in addition to the strategic direction that leadership offers, a leader need also to chart workable, measurable and achievable plans and targets supportive of his/her vision. What I do not agree is the assertion that Ghana no longer needs a visionary leader. This is because, from many perspectives, one could argue, and I certainly do, that the notion of visioned leadership is a connotative one that has in it embedded notions such as strategic direction, objectives and working plans to aid the achievement of the said vision. And in this direction, examples abound.

To home is Nkrumah's visioned leadership of building an industrialised nation. This vision had in it embedded operational goals such as sending Ghanaians abroad for science education and the rests. Embedded in it also were the implementation of the free education policy, the building of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission and the many programmes to support this vision. A bit distant but closely to home in socio-political terms is India’s Mahatma Ghandi's call for non-violence approach to decolonisation. In this visioned leadership was the use of silent mass demonstrations and various civil strikes that the people India embarked upon in order to gain their freedom from the imperialist. Same could be said about Madiba and the ANCs approach to the freedom project in South Africa.

Against this background, in my opinion, the call should rather be that Ghana does not need misguided visionaries. Leaders who possess blurred vision in the kind of the alcoholic. Such a blurred visioned leadership, like the alcoholic, is given a false hope, false confidence and of course, a false direction of how the nation is built. This falsehood is as a direct consequence of that leader's detachment from reality. This is the kind of leadership Ghana does not need, but we certainly need visioned leadership as only through visioned leaders we derive appropriate working plans and goals that support our vision.

By: Kobby Mensah, University of Sheffield, UK
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