The Attitude Lounge with Kodwo Brumpon: Our moral blind spot

“Wherever a person goes to dwell, his or her character goes with him or her.” – African proverb

Whenever we talk about Ghana’s development, we often treat corruption as a boardroom transaction. What is most interesting about our treatment is how we have tricked our hearts into believing that corruption is a distant monster from ourselves as individuals.

We perceive a cold, brown envelope sliding across a mahogany desk in the flickering shadows of an office or in a bar as far from us. So, we point fingers at the big men in their tinted SUVs, finding a strange, bitter comfort in the idea that the rot belongs to them, and them alone.

But we are profoundly, tragically wrong. The most devastating corruption in Ghana is not the one we see and hear on the news. They are the ones we feed at our homes and nurture in our classrooms. They are in the quiet, intimate theft of the present and the future of our country, dressed up in the warm clothing of a family favour or a pastoral blessing.

It begins for example when a teacher, the very person meant to guard the sanctity of the mind, asks a child to go buy for him or her in exchange for becoming the teacher’s pet.

In that moment, the child’s world breaks. He or she does not just learn a lesson in power; they lose their faith in effort. He or she learns that his or her brilliance is worthless if they do not have a connection with the person of authority.

We are schooling them in the art of the bribe before they can even spell the word. Interestingly, many of us call this respect or helping the teacher. Well, we are lying to ourselves. We are actually training them to believe that truth is negotiable and that merit is a fairytale.

That is why the most dangerous form of corruption is not the one we see in the headlines. It is the one we teach in our classrooms and whisper at our dinner tables. Our corruption is not merely a failure of law enforcement, but that of socialisation.

Before a Ghanaian ever encounters a public contract, he or she has already been schooled in a moral economy that prioritises loyalty over merit, and silence over truth. To solve it, we must look at the hidden curriculum that shapes the Ghanaian psyche.

The emotional tragedy of the Ghanaian ecosystem is that we have rebranded nepotism as loyalty. When a big man uses his influence to protocol a relative into a job they did not earn, we sing praises and give thanks to God for a breakthrough. Let us be honest. That job was stolen from the child of a labourer who had to study extra hard to pass exams.

It was stolen from the son of a market woman who has no big man to call. That is why when we celebrate these shortcuts, we are actually celebrating the fact that we have built a country where our children will only survive if they are well-connected. We are building a sanctuary for the mediocre and a graveyard for the gifted.

Outside the classroom, the cultural authority of the elder creates a second layer of ethical friction. Our culturalized ‘respect-for-the-elders’ mentality, is a foundational virtue, yet it is often weaponized to stifle accountability.

When a young professional sees an elder in their family or community fighting for protocol slots for jobs or diverting communal resources, the social pressure to remain silent is immense. To question such an elder is perceived to be disrespectful. This attitude creates a culture of complicit silence.

We have socialised the general populace to believe that the good is synonymous with being loyal. If your uncle gets you a job by jumping the queue, you are taught to see it as a blessing rather than a theft from a more qualified, nameless stranger.

We celebrate the smartness of the individual while ignoring the collective rot of the system. We need to understand that these small acts of bypass and favours are not victimless. They are a form of intergenerational debt.

When we use who-you-know to get a contract we did not earn, or when we look the other way as a teacher favours your child, you are participating in the destruction of the very meritocracy that would make Ghana a global powerhouse.

The reality is that when merit is sidelined, productivity plummets. Every time a connected incompetent person takes a role from a disconnected genius, Ghana’s development agenda, as well as her gross domestic product takes a hit.

Corruption is why our systems do not work. Let us therefore treat corruption as a human capital crisis, not just a legal one…

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