President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said the shameful and condemnable brutality of some Africans who tried to enter Europe will continue unless African governments create an environment that engendered hope, peace and prosperity for its youth.
President Akufo-Addo said the incident of brutality and disrespect meted out to migrated Africans at Melilla would surely be added to the long list of incidents of young Africans humiliated and killed in their attempt to reach Europe.
Spanish and Moroccan police, on 24 June, killed 37 unarmed African migrants and wounded 100 others at the border of Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla. The incident occurred when some 2000 Africans, many of them from Sudan, tried to enter Melilla in search of a better life.
The African Union (AU) and Amnesty International have described photographic images and video footage from the crime scene as shocking showing bundles of people — dead and alive — piled up on the ground while Moroccan police walk among them, shaking and beating them with truncheons and batons.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has said the incident is “the highest recorded number of deaths in a single incident over many years of migrants attempting to cross from Morocco to Europe via the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta.”
Speaking at the 19th Plenary Assembly of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) in Accra Tuesday, President Akufo-Addo said “we the political leaders of our countries, carry the responsibility to help take Africa out of poverty, to help grow our economies and to help bring prosperity.”
He said African leaders have the responsibility to make their countries attractive to the citizens, especially for the youth to “believe they have a future here, and not risk their lives trying to get into parts of the world where they and their generations remain second class citizens.”
“We cannot build this happy and prosperous society we aspire to unless we lead rounded lives, we need a citizenry that pays equal attention to the head, the hand and the heart to be able to build a successful society,” he stated.
President Akufo-Addo said since the majority of African countries gained their independence, some 60 years ago, many African peoples expected to live in secure and stable countries.
But after that great promise and excitement of the early years of independence, President Akufo-Addo said political freedom, unfortunately, did not deliver the economic prosperity hoped for, instead, the continent was plagued with political instability, manifested mostly by military coups and widespread poverty.
That disappointment, according to the President, led to young African people losing confidence that they could build a successful future in their home countries and migration to Europe and America became the main aspiration of African youth.
He said throughout the ages, migration had featured prominently in human activity, where some time back the migration traffic was from Europe into Africa, and Africans who ended up in the Americas were not willing migrants, but taken away against their will in the most infamous of trades, “the barbaric and inhumane Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.”
But in recent times, young Africans have subjected themselves to the intolerable and inhumane conditions of crossing the Sahara and drowning in the Mediterranean, in the hope of making a living in Europe.
That, according to President, has elicited “no chance of their being treated with respect when they do make it to Europe, nor can those of us left behind ever hope to be treated with respect by the rest of the world.”
President Akufo-Addo said the reality today is “if the country from which you start your journey of migration is prospering, you will be treated with respect wherever you go.”
That, President Akufo-Addo indicated, had informed his government to invest a lot in education and other sectors of the economy.
The President said the government was creating the atmosphere for entrepreneurs to flourish and create jobs and for creative artists to have room to let their imagination take them to heights yet unknown.
President Akufo-Addo said before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ghana was building a strong economy, with an annual average GDP growth rate of 7%, one of the fastest rates of growth in the world at the time.
He said Ghana, in an attempt to build a modern and prosperous nation, had for the past 29 years of its 4th Republic, enjoyed political stability under a multi-party constitution and the longest period of stable, constitutional governance in our hitherto tumultuous history.
All these efforts, the President said had reinforced the country’s position as the 2nd most peaceful country in Africa, and ranked as the best trade and investment hub in West Africa, with 56% of the young people in Ghana believing Ghana is moving in the right direction.
Despite the severe devastation of COVID-19, the Russian -Ukraine war “We will continue to work to realise the vision of our forebears who envisioned us to be the Black Star of Africa,” he stated.
Rex Mainoo Yeboah, ISD
