Accra, Ghana 29 March 2023 Keynote lecture delivered as part of the UG College of Humanities celebration of UG@75 The UG humanities program’s contribution to the building of prosperous, inclusive, democratic Ghana: Random thoughts and reflections By E. Gyimah-Boadi, Afrobarometer co-founder and board chair On February 5, 1965, a student got up at the Commonwealth Hall dining room and implored his fellow students: “Let us observe one-minute’s silence in memory of the late Dr. J.B. Danquah. It will be recalled that this man was one of those who fought for a separate university college for the Gold Coast. May he rest in peace.” Dr. Danquah, the ace Ghanaian scholar, lawyer, journalist, politician and statesman had died in prison the previous day. (He was also an individual who had embodied the values of speaking truth to power and commitment to public service connected to the humanities.) But people were afraid to mourn his death publicly — out of fear of repercussions from the CPP Government that had unjustly jailed him under the notorious preventive detention act. On the University of Ghana campus, however, Lawrence Otu Cantey, a student of the faculty of law spoke out and his colleagues supported him. According to Peter Barker, this was the largest public tribute to Danquah, “[A]part from the crowd of family, friends and fellow-lawyers at his burial in Kibi.” The exceptionally brave action of Mr. Cantey and his fellow students on that day provides a good example to me of what citizens do when they have been exposed to the humanities as a field of study. The humanities attempt to make sense of ourselves as humans, the world we live in and the societies and cultures we create. At its best, it imparts the values of empathy and social consciousness. It also creates awareness of and interest in issues of justice and equity and truth to push societies to their highest peak, and nourishes the human spirit. This is why I consider it a deep honour and a supreme privilege for me to be invited to participate in this Anniversary. For me, it has always been impossible to separate Legon from the ideals of the humanities. I am hugely grateful to the Provost of the College, the Anniversary Lecture Committee and the College for selecting me to give this lecture. It Copyright ©Afrobarometer 2023 1 provides me with my first opportunity to give a lecture at this university nearly 10 years since my retirement as faculty member. But more than that, it provides a rare opportunity for me to reflect with you about the courage of the past and to envision a future of great possibilities where we can collectively create the new Canteys who, unrestrained by fear, and inspired by valor, would confront human rights violation, abuse of power and corruption in order to create the new Ghana. In this lecture, I shall focus my remarks on some of the ways in which the humanities program at the university of Ghana, particularly the broad values and orientations associated with that field of study, has impacted on the building of a prosperous, inclusive and democratic Ghana. My aim in this lecture is to affirm the following: The study of the humanities cultivates important skills and values, and positions graduates to make significant contributions to national development, particularly in the building of an inclusive democratic society. It also leads to fun and interesting lives and careers! This lecture is organized in three fairly loose parts, with a short homily: § Part one is largely a semi-autobiographical sketch of my exposure to the humanities at this university in the mid to late seventies, and how it has shaped and aided my own life and career. It is complemented with a short bio of the career path and achievements of another graduate from the humanities program in the late 1980s and early 1990s. § Part two pays homage to the contributions Legon in general and the humanities program in particular have made to the building of a prosperous, just and democratic society in Ghana in the period roughly between 1960 and 1990 § Part three focuses on Legon humanities students and faculty in the face of the ongoing deficits in and setbacks in the construction of a humane, just and democratic society in the Fourth Republic of Ghana. I conclude with a short homily: a plea for the humanities program and its people to return to the traditions of speaking truth to power, defending the defenseless, and practicing altruism instead of joining in the fray. Copyright ©Afrobarometer 2023 2 Part one The UG humanities and me as well as a few others I know The university of Ghana and its humanities program into which I walked in 1974 as a first-year student was an incredibly charged arena. I sat transfixed in those first classes: philosophy, ancient history, political science and African Studies. Walking with Herodotus one day, and Walter Rodney the next, my understanding of the human imagination and spirit and capacity for empathy was vastly expanded. I eventually graduated with a major in political science and minor in ancient history. So I am an unalloyed, unadulterated product of the humanities program of the University of Ghana. My fondest memories of the years I spent on campus as a student in the humanities courses, and later a teaching assistant, include intellectually edifying visits to the Hall Libraries (particularly that of my hall of residence, the Premier Hall, Legon Hall); the Departmental Libraries (particularly those in the departments of political science, ancient history and philosophy); and, of course, the great Balme Library. Roughly 50 years later, I still remember with fondness the musty smell in those rooms; and also feel the serenity and majesty evoked by those environments. The experience I had with most of the lecturers in the humanities classes I took was highly positive. Though many of them had attended the best universities, had superb command over the subjects they taught, and delivered their lectures with great clarity, they came across as kindly, patient (with our youthful foibles), and unaffected. This served the lesson to some of us that humility and respect for one’s subordinates was actually a pronounced sign of maturity and engendered endearment, turning upside down the authoritarian trend common in our traditional practices, and attendant hierarchical structures. My lecturers also kindled in me a strong desire to learn and acquire similar mastery over some of those subjects. It also inspired in me the desire to be able to teach some of those courses with similar effectiveness in the future. Some of the most important things they taught us were delivered in a humorous and half- jocular manner, which made them all the more memorable. For example, Professor Kweku Folson once quipped that having been so thoroughly indoctrinated in Marxist ideology by our lecturers, we students were totally convinced that a lecturer heading to the departmental toilet was invariably on his way to partake in some class warfare. This was his way of imparting to us the vital lesson that not all social, political or economic phenomenon could be meaningfully explained and understood in class terms (as was fashionable in those Copyright ©Afrobarometer 2023 3 days). It also gave us the permission to scrutinize high-sounding and all-encompassing theories with the rubric of our common sense. Of course, I leave it to the students who I had the privilege of teaching at this university and elsewhere to judge if I achieved anything closer to the levels of pedagogical effectiveness I ascribe to many of my Legon humanities lecturers. But whatever the verdict is, my esteemed lecturers — Kweku Folson, Ebo Hutchful, Emmanuel Hansen, Kofi Drah, Yaw Twumasi, Afari Gyan, Joe Peasah, Yaw Saffu (in political science); JB Leaning and Adeleye (in ancient history); Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye (in philosophy) — all did their very best for me. The Legon campus I encountered in the mid to late seventies offered a rich variety of inter- faculty and other university-wide lectures, symposia and colloquia that complemented what we learnt in classrooms and on our own in the libraries. Our lecturers engaged in lively intellectual and ideological debates and jousting over a variety of issues of the day. They were roughly divided between socialists/marxists/radicals/leftists, on the one hand, and capitalists/liberals/conservatives/right-wingers, on the other. They argued at these forums over the true causes of African economic underdevelopment and the pathways for overcoming it; liberal democracy versus developmental dictatorship as the ideal political system for achieving development; the role traditional African values versus western values in national development; internal versus external factors as the main drivers of the spate of military coups in Africa; etc. It was both shocking and exhilarating to be present at a Legon academic workshop at which one scholar punched a hole in his colleague’s trenchant defense of the practice in some African societies whereby kings were buried together with several newly decapitated human heads. He simply asked his colleague to consider how his argument would sound if it was his own head or that of a close family member that had to be decapitated to fulfill that traditionally-sanctioned requirement for kingly entombment. These intra-mural university forums vastly expanded our general knowledge and awareness of the close linkages shared among the disciplines in humanities, social science, and law. They helped us to appreciate what we learnt in the classroom’s relevance beyond the classroom; and gave us the self-confidence that we can deploy the Ivory Tower’s knowledge to tackle national and community challenges. But to simply luxuriate in these conversations and discussions, without any attempt at connecting them to the world outside our gates would have amounted to intellectual onanism. Indeed, I came to understand this loud and clear, when I attended a lecture by Justice Nii Amaa Ollenu, and got to experience an “Otu Cantey moment,” in-person. The General Acheampong-National Redemption Council military regime was still enjoying its honeymoon Copyright ©Afrobarometer 2023 4 among students at the University. And here was the eminent jurist and leading member of the establishment advising us to curb our enthusiasm for the new autocratic rulers — without any regard for the fact that his advice would be unpopular with his military regime- supporting student audience; and would also earn him a place in the military junta’s blacklist. Not too long thereafter, the knowledge and insights gained from the humanities program, including Justice Ollenu’s caution, would become relevant. It was crucial to the university students’ protests against police and military personnel human rights abuse on ordinary citizens, high-handed treatment of critics of the Acheampong-SMC government’s mismanagement and rampant corruption. This generation of Legon students, their student bodies – the Student Representative Council and National Union of Ghana Students, as well as the lecturers’ union (UTAG), featured prominently in broad-based opposition to the ill- fated attempt to impose so called Union Government on Ghana (a tripartite government in which power was to be equally shared by the military, the police, and the rest of us civilians). At the personal level, this internalization of the humanities values, both theoretical and practical, prepared me for a lifetime of scholarship, university teaching and activism. I stayed in the humanities after Legon, obtaining post-graduate degrees in political science, and returned here to teach in the department of political science. The humanities also stayed in me, and its ethos of public service was one of the factors that inspired my voluntary return to Ghana in early 1986. This was shortly after finishing my PhD studies and in spite of the fact that the Ghanaian economy was in dire straits: the Rawlings-PNDC era dictatorship was in full bloom, and indeed, very few freshly minted doctorate degree holders, with good prospects of finding jobs in North America, Europe or other African countries were opting to return to Ghana. While I physically left the University and the country between 1991 and 1997 (mainly for family reasons), Ghana stayed on my mind. Influenced by the same pro-human rights, pro- democracy values and commitment to public service ethos the humanities had instilled in me, my research and advocacy work focused on the processes of dismantling authoritarian political structures and replacing them with democratic ones – a process unfolding in Ghana and elsewhere on the African continent at that time. I researched and published on the resurrection of civil society and the transitions to democracy in Ghana and other African nations. And upon my return to Ghana in 1997, I came back to the service of Legon, teaching once again in the political science department. Copyright ©Afrobarometer 2023 5 By this time (the late nineties), the political space in Ghana was relatively open, a development to which the UG humanities faculty members, students and alumni had no doubt made significant contributions (I will say more about this later). But there were also major gaps in a number of areas complementary to the democratization agenda. Significant shortcomings remained in the areas of election transparency and fairness; in citizen participation in policy-making and governance between elections; and in government accountability. The civil society organizations I co-founded were all dedicated to helping close some of those gaps. For instance, CDD-Ghana was formed to deploy the tools of social science research and analysis to promote democracy, good governance and economic openness in Ghana and Africa. The Ghana Integrity Initiative, which is the Ghana chapter of Transparency International, was formed to mobilize the power of citizens and citizen groups to fight corruption. The Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition was formed to bring together relevant independent non-state agencies and state institutions to fight corruption. The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) brought representatives of independent civil society organizations and prominent personalities together to promote fairness and integrity in our elections. And the Afrobarometer, a pan-African survey research project that helps to give voice to ordinary citizens across Africa by tracking their experiences, evaluations and perspectives on political, economic and social developments in their own countries, and injecting the findings into policy processes at the national, continental, and international levels. All of this work was done in the spirit of luminaries from the humanities faculty at Legon such as Professors Kweku Folson (whose research and writings exposed the hollowness of the PNDC radical left-wing ideological posturing); Adu Boahen (whose 1988 JB Danquah Memorial Lectures are generally credited with breaking the PNDC era of culture of silence); PAV Ansah (who functioned as headmaster over the first democratically-elected Rawlings-NDC administration, which was still struggling to shed its autocratic Rawlings-PNDC skin); and Kofi Kumado (who served as one-man referee of the newly elected-NDC government’s compliance with the provisions of the 1992 Constitution, among others). Admittedly, the democracy and accountable governance project in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa has a long way to go, and a backsliding trend has emerged in some areas. But these institutions have helped improve election credibility, put a spotlight on official corruption, enhanced the voice of ordinary citizens in policy processes, and more. And I am deeply thankful to the start I got from the humanities program in this university for giving me the knowledge, skills, perspectives, and confidence that enabled me to contribute to our dear country's development in these ways. Copyright ©Afrobarometer 2023 6 (Ms) Georgette Sakyi Addo (nee Barnes) But my story is far from unique. Indeed, I believe many of you would know of numerous other individuals who have come out of this university and its humanities program in whose lives and career you can recognize the programs’ pro-human rights/equity/inclusion ethos and values. I want to share with you one such example. Georgette Barnes Sakyi-Addo (nee Barnes). Ms. Sakyi-Addo graduated from this University in the early nineties with a degree in French and Linguistics, followed by post-graduate studies at the School of Communication Studies. She was hired as an administrative assistant by the Ghanaian office of a North American mining company after national service to help them gain access to francophone West Africa. Her sterling career progression from this point offers a good illustration of the superb problem-solving skills, intellectual dexterity and creativity that you can get from good training in the humanities. Above all, it showcases the pre-dispositions and orientations engendered in an individual by exposure to the humanities and its core values of the humanities. Ms. Sakyi-Addo's work in the mining sector exposed her to the significant supply chain gaps that impacted the company’s operations. To help address the persistent supply-chain and other logistics problems of that company, she quit her secure desk-bound job to establish her own private firm – Georgette Barnes Limited (GBL). GBL quickly became renowned as a supplier of drilling, exploration, and extraction materials as well as mining equipment to companies in Ghana and elsewhere in West Africa. Her work as an administrative assistant and supply chain manager exposed her to shop-floor workers and high-level executives in the mining industry. It also gave her access to meetings where industry big-shots made important decisions. Realizing the near absence of women in the mining industry as a whole (outside of secretarial pools), and particularly in its executive suites, Georgette set about to effect a positive change. To help close this gap, she co- founded the Accra Mining Network (AMN) and served as its president from 2010 to 2015. That NGO has been providing a powerful platform for systematically encouraging young women to embrace mining, including opting for work inside the mine pit. It is currently active in 16 communities in Ghana that have large-scale gold mines. To help overcome the stereotype of mining as a man’s job, she advised young women to feel free to combine wearing their choice of facial makeup and fancy hairdo with the miner’s hard hats and rubber boots. “Be authentic; Be yourself; Be feminine (if you want). But deliver your work,” was the mantra she recited to the ladies in the mining industry. Copyright ©Afrobarometer 2023 7 Georgette’s activism in the mining sector has attracted a variety of funding partners, such as Solidaridad and the Ford Foundation. And her activism goes well beyond Ghana. She is also the founder and current president of the Association of Women in Mining Africa (AWMA), which has sub-regional chapters in western, central, southern, and eastern Africa as well as Morocco. This pan-African NGO has undertaken extensive advocacy with mining companies and chambers of commerce in Ghana and elsewhere on the continent to get them to expand women’s access to the sector. Her latest project is focused on getting ECOWAS and the AU to adopt a gender protocol for the geo-extractive sector protocol, with the goal of promoting women in mining. It's no wonder that, in addition to many previous prestigious awards, Forbes Afrique named Georgette Barnes Sakyi-Addo among its 2023 50 Most Influential Women in Africa – citing the significant strides she has made in mining and her international success in the mining sector. Part two The Legon humanities program students and faculty members’ contribution to the building of a prosperous, just and democratic society in Ghana before the 4th Republic This lecture cannot begin to exhaust the contributions the University of Ghana, and particularly its humanities students and faculty members, have made to the project of constructing a free and just democratic society – collectively and individually. They had pretty much established themselves as a force in Ghanaian public life and politics by the time of the overthrow of the Nkrumah-CPP government in February 1966. They asserted themselves and criticized Nkrumah and the incumbent party at a time when it was considered extremely dangerous to do so. Mr Cantey’s action on Feb 5, 1965 is a good example of this, but it was not the first. Earlier on, they had passed a resolution condemning changes in the law in 1964 that brought the judiciary under the control of the president. Five students involved in writing that resolution were sentenced to several months of imprisonment. The students of the period also vehemently protested the deportation of expatriate university faculty members for alleged "subversion.” And as for Mr. Cantey, he was taken into detention a few days after leading that tribute to Danquah. Students and faculty of the University’s humanities programs continued to feature prominently in national movements and initiatives to fight oppression, government mismanagement and corruption for the remainder of the 1960s and throughout the seventies as well as eighties. They mounted spirited protests against the Busia government’s attempts to curb free speech, such as its ban on so-called "negative media commentary," and its Copyright ©Afrobarometer 2023 8 over-the-top paranoia-driven proscriptions against the propagation of Nkrumahism. They trenchantly criticized the Busia administration's naïve and ill-timed foreign policy plank oriented towards dialogue at a time when the racist apartheid regime of South Africa was violently suppressing its black citizens. Students and some faculty welcomed the overthrow of the Busia-PP government and the arrival of the new military regime led by General Kutu Acheampong and the National Redemption Council, at least in the initial stages. They responded positively and enthusiastically to the NRC’s national food self-sufficiency initiative (Operation Feed Yourself) which enjoined Ghanaians to go into agriculture, especially food production. They even abandoned the classroom to assist with sugarcane production – harvesting, transportation, building irrigation dams at Komenda, Dawhenya, Afife, Tano, etc,. But that did not blind them to the increasingly repressive nature of the Acheampong military government. Legon students boycotted classes and embarked on demonstrations to protest so-called military cum police brutality. In a more sustained manner, they stayed in the forefront of the middle and professional class agitations against military rule. They also opposed the proposed sharing of political power between civilians and the military and police (dubbed Union Government, UNIGOV for short). In many ways, the Legon Observer offered the best representation of the impactful presence of Legon and its humanities scholars on the national democratic development scene in the mid-sixties and throughout the seventies. Based in the Department of Political Science, it was established in July 1966 by the Legon Society for National Affairs, and published fortnightly from that time till the early 1980s. The magazine carved a niche for itself as the principal medium through which UG and allied intellectuals fought against authoritarianism, mismanagement, and corruption under both military and civilian administrations. It also provided a platform for vibrant debates on key national challenges and what could be done to address them. Though the SMC military regime subjected some of the magazine's leaders to harassment and extra-legal detention, it carried on until 1983, when it went into involuntary liquidation under the Rawlings-PNDC government. Among the pivotal roles the UG humanities program and faculties have played in Ghana’s democracy building process, we should also count among the significant players the School of Communication Studies and its baby, Radio Univers. These two institutions have been indispensable to the development of independent media, especially radio, and free expression in the country. Copyright ©Afrobarometer 2023 9 The Legon humanities program has produced many of the heroes in Ghana’s struggle for social justice, human rights, democracy and accountable governance in the years preceding and since the advent of the 4th Republic. The list includes luminaries such as Professors PAV Ansah, Adu Boahen, Kofi Kumado, Akoto Ampaw, Yao Graham, Takyiwaa Manu, Kwame Karikari, Audrey Gadzekpo, among others. The list of heroes should also include the judges whose jurisprudential decisions have defined the values that sustain our democracy, such as Justice Agnes Dzordzi whose judicial rulings in the late 1990s challenged the use of the existing criminal and seditious libel laws to stifle free speech. Dr Afari Gyan from the philosophy and political science departments and the Institute of African Studies also belongs on that list: under his leadership Ghanaian elections have become competitive and their outcomes largely credible. The humanities faculties have also produced many, if not most, of the leadership of student and academic staff bodies - the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) and Student Representative Councils (SRC) as well as University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG). Those organizations stood in the forefront of the national struggles for democracy and social justice in the seventies and eighties. Admittedly, there are important caveats to the narrative of the older generation of humanities students, faculty and alumni’s commitment to the defense of human rights, equity, democracy, etc. Indeed, not all the interventions of Legon humanities students and faculty were altruistic or even consistent with the ethos of the humanities. An example is the pulling out and incinerating of perceived racist, pro-imperialist and anti-Nkrumah literature at the university. Another example was university students’ support for the Acheampong coup, which was partly motivated by the fact that the government of Kofi Busia had introduced a scheme under which university students would have to start taking out loans to cover part of their boarding and personal expenses. We were not always consistent in our application of the principles and values acquired from the humanities. My generation of university students and some faculty had given vociferous support to the June 4 insurrection and the Rawlings-AFRC junta. We pilloried the Ghana Bar Association, the TUC and others for daring to criticize the killing of the army generals and other horrendous human rights abuse associated with the so-called house-cleaning exercise. I have my own confession of guilt to make in these regrettable developments: although I was Copyright ©Afrobarometer 2023 10 away from Ghana when the coup took place, I must admit, with deep shame and embarrassment, that I too applauded the executions. University students (not me this time) and some faculty were also among the early supporters of the second Rawlings coup (31st December 1981) that overthrew the 24-month Limann-PNP administration and ushered in Ghana’s longest era of authoritarian rule. My point is that I don’t want to overstate the achievements of my generation of UG humanities programs faculty and students. As members of the Ghanaian establishment, we have far too often failed in the discharge of our guardianship functions. We have presided over the depletion of our forests and degradation of our rivers. We have allowed or even participated in the abuse of power, the spread of corruption and the institutionalization of graft and self-dealing. Still, the pre-4th Republic humanities students and faculty, as well as universities on the whole, did make notable contributions to the development of democracy, as I have recounted. In my view, the heroic contributions many have made to the building of a democratic society in Ghana should be viewed as at least partly off-setting our many failings. Part three When I turn to our world, our nation, today, I wonder whether and how we are deploying the values and attitudes normally associated with exposure to the humanities? And in the face of the recent incidents in which the very strong and powerful beat up the very weak and defenseless, I also ask, where are the current generation of UG humanities scholars, students and recent graduates in the human rights, social justice and democracy defense and promotion space? I am referring here to retrogressive actions and developments, such as: § The recent brutal assault on Ashaiman citizens by the military (which has been greeted by near silence) § The growing homophobia, seen in the spate of unprovoked physical assaults on suspected gays and lesbians, and in the shameless persecution of homosexuals reflected in the anti-LGBT bill being considered by parliament, which is apparently popular. And I ask: where are today’s generation of Otu Canteys, Adu Boahens, PAV Ansahs, Akoto Ampaws, Takyiwaa Manus, Audrey Gadzekpos, etc. to call out our leaders when they: Copyright ©Afrobarometer 2023 11 § Insist on using state resources to build a national cathedral and prevaricating around it? § Preside over persistent graft, corruption and self-dealing? § Abuse/misuse executive power and incumbency, for instance in appointing political partisans to the Electoral Commission; and protecting and sometimes exonerating appointees whose actions are in clear breach of public office-holder code of ethics? And in the intra-campus context, who among today's humanities students is challenging § The misogyny represented in the resistance to democratizing the access of women to all university halls of residence. Of course, I don't expect UG humanities students and faculty members to be busy-bodies and at-large- policemen and women. I don't expect the University community to be at all times taking up the defense of democracy, human rights, rule of law and inclusive governance. After all, the 4th Republic presents a different political, social and economic context: we are no longer called upon to resist military rule. Today we have a fairly democratic national constitution with a panoply of formally independent constitutional bodies (parliament, judiciary, EC, NCCE, NMC), along with a vibrant media and active civil society. And I appreciate the fact that today’s students and faculty members face different material challenges than some earlier generations did. I was on a full scholarship, but students today have to grapple with finding money to pay heavy school fees and scramble to secure accommodation. Meanwhile, lecturers’ salaries and research grants are woefully inadequate. Also in defense of the current generation of students, we the older generation should ask ourselves whether the quality of the training we are giving them in the College actually provides them what they need in order to take on the task of leading the fight for justice, equity and democracy? However, regardless of the current challenges you face, as students and faculty, especially those in the humanities programs, there are things that you are uniquely placed to do for the cause of social justice, social inclusion, the rule of law, and democratic governance. Firstly, as students, you are on the average, young; you are idealistic as most young people tend to be; you are, most likely, not yet bread winners, and therefore unburdened in the way you will be after school, etc. Copyright ©Afrobarometer 2023 12 Secondly, together with your faculty members, you occupy a unique vantage point as dwellers in the Ivory Tower – you are much freer than most to study, reflect, analyze, and contribute to public life. And direct and indirect exposure to the humanities should have given you some capacity to empathize. Thirdly, as a group and as individuals, you are veritable members of the Ghanaian elite. Therefore, you do carry some leadership and guardianship responsibility. And moreover, the physical risk of speaking truth power is almost non-existent today. Otu Cantey, Adu Boahen, Akoto Ampaw, Kwame Karikari and others confronted dictators even when they stood the risk of imprisonment - and in fact, did suffer imprisonment. So, we must hear from you not only when you are on strike to demand your entitlements as students, lecturers, as NUGS, SCR, UTAG, or as current or old students who are resisting efforts to turn your hall co-ed. And when we hear your voice in national debates, it should NOT just be reflective of your partisan affiliation with the NDC or NPP, TEIN or TESCON. It should be directed at serving the public interest, and in particular, securing the welfare of the voiceless and defenseless members of our society. As students, faculty members and recent graduates of the UG humanities program, and as citizens, I urge us all try to live by the creed left behind by the late great African American congressman and civil rights leader, John Lewis: “If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something, you have to do something." Above all, I implore you to do your best to follow Lawerence Otu Cantey’s powerful example: take the risk of speaking truth to power, and reclaim the UG humanities vanguard role in the building and sustenance of a pro-human rights, accountable and inclusive governance regime in Ghana - today and beyond. You're never too young to make a difference. /Afrobarometer @Afrobarometer Copyright ©Afrobarometer 2023 13