The other Sunday evening I was chatting with my neighbour who I haven’t seen going to work for some time and he revealed he had opted for an early retirement.

At 55 he felt he had done and seen enough of corporate life and it was time to bow out happily and concentrate on other important aspects of life such as family, spiritual well-being and giving back to society in voluntary works.

As I sat there like ‘mumu’ thinking how lucky this man had been because others had to be forced by their employers before they retired statutorily, he recounted how as a young man he had planned his life well, spent wisely and on important things only and sought the best of education for his children.

If with proper planning and sound decision-making an individual can retire 5 years before his legal retirement age, then a nation which is made up of millions of such resourceful individuals,and has abundant natural resources with a pond of talents can do even more.

In March 2017, Ghana will attain 60 years. Five months after that, Malaysia will also attain 60.

If they were human beings, these two countries would be retiring next year. They will make way for the new.

With Ghana’s GDP per capita of $1384 and Malaysia’s $9766, one nation would obviously have retired better than the other. And lest I forget, it’s this same Malaysia that came here after independence to learn about our oil palm industry.

This surely is not the Ghana our forefather fought and worked so hard for. This is not the Ghana people went to jail for. Today’s all-talk-but-no-action Ghana is not what our forefathers envisaged or they would not have given it their all to attain independence. Something definitely has gone amiss along the way.

The more I think about Ghana today, the more convinced I become that the Ghana after March 2017 needs a rebirth.

Yes, Ghana needs rebirth because 60 years after independence we still go cup in hand to some ‘donor’ every year for budgetary support even though we have all the natural resources that make a country self-sustaining.

Yes, Ghana needs rebirth because we have been independent for 60 years yet every year we lose hundreds of Ghanaians to cholera, a disease that’s primarily caused by filth.

Thousands of Ghanaians die every year through road accidents, yet there’s a whole Commission on road safety, with people who get paid monthly with our taxes.

Ghana definitely needs rebirth because as a 60-year-old country we still do NPP/NDC, the two political parties who together with their antecedents have ruled Ghana for more than half of her age and all we can show for today are debt, diseases, poverty, unemployment, corruption and a fogey ‘chew and pour’ educational system.

For the new Ghana to retire happily in 2077, she needs to be run like a business where there will be no room for slackness and inefficiencies in public service.

If the new Ghana will have a comfortable retirement, then the current crop of politicians, both in government and in opposition must shamefully give way to the young and energetic technocrats who understand the challenges of our time and are in better position to proffer solutions.

In this day and age when others have built over 50km of rail lines under the sea, our politicians are here blasting our ears with noise over who has built more interchanges and who built the longest. Majestically pathetic!

I envisage a Ghana where our Universities will not only be interested in producing degrees but will focus on churning out responsible thinkers, innovators and problem solvers for nation building.

The Ghana I envisage is the one where the schoolboy in Nyamebekyere who at the moment sees his teacher only from Tuesday to Thursday will not be deprived of the opportunity to realise his full potentials just because he sat for the same exams with the boy in Cantonment in Accra.

Ghana deserves better and she does because she has all it takes to.

It’s however not all gloomy. The current crops of politicians have done very well in certain areas and we thank them for that.

Yes, we thank them for growing the Corruption industry to such a phenomenal state. We will not complain about their offshore accounts. No, we will pretend we have no idea about their properties abroad.

Our wives and children have died enough due to the better health care system you have instituted; we have endured poverty for far too long thanks to your great poverty alleviation initiatives. Our youths have been unemployed for many years due to your sound economic management. For these and the many other great things you have done, we say thank you, Mr Politician!

As youths of Ghana, if our future means anything to us, then we must forget about today’s politician. We must forget about them because no matter how they try, they do not understand the problems that confront this generation and the generations after this.

They have been, they are and they will be ruling this nation with ideas that were only relevant in their time and guess what? What worked in their time will not necessarily work in our time and in the new Ghana.

Let’s wise up, people.