A lecturer at the Manchester Business School, P.K. Richardson, has blamed Ghana's stagnating development on what he calls poor leadership, senseless and vindictive partisanship, and lack of accountability on the part of the nation's leaders. He said the chronic cycle of leaders who promise heaven but leave behind a retrogressive nation once they leave office must stop. Mr Richardson was speaking on Joy FM's Super Morning Show Tuesday on the subject of what can be done to improve the results of development projects in Ghana. Richardson laid the foundation for the conversation saying that it was essential to have a vision for development, but that the vision must be realistic and credible. He said even though Ghana controls an enviable wealth of natural resources and many Ghanaians individually achieved great successes on the world stage, thanks largely to the high value that they placed on education, the nation's public institutions have remained in a moribund state. The major challenge that confronts the country, he says, is managing its human and natural resources effectively in order to organize them into a comprehensive and politically unified plan for national development. He said that for development plans to succeed, the ruling party must put national interests ahead of political interests and appointees must be selected for important posts according to merit rather than political loyalty. What is worse, he said, is the fact that many citizens are either too aloof to demand accountability from their leaders or are intimidated into docility by vindictive politicians. The effect, he said, is to dissuade many talented and qualified people from entering national politics. "A lot of good men over the years have been cowed into saying nothing; they disagree, they say this is not a good policy [but] they can't say [publicly]. In fact when you say it, [the politicians will say] you are not one of us and yet you love Ghana; you are saying it because you love Ghana," he lamented. Contributing to the discussion, founder of Leading Ladies’ Network, Yawa Hansen-Quao, said that failures in the development sector do not stem from a shortage of big ideas but rather from a lack of strategies to achieve the set goals. She considers it a problem that the everyday Ghanaian only partially understands the realities of development, especially the sacrifices that a realistic development agenda requires of everyday people. She said if the national conversation on development were simplified to make it more accessible, the people would also be in a better position to hold politicians accountable, thereby promoting efficiency in the management of the nation's resources. To close the discussion, Mr Richardson cited Singapore, a country which, like Ghana, was beset by poverty, tribalism, and a lack of development in 1960s. By 1995, their per capita income had increased 50 fold thanks to a focus on national security, economic development, and social harmony. By comparison, Ghana and most other African states made relatively little progress in that same period.