President John Dramani Mahama has stated that the government is committed to improving the lives of Ghanaians, even though the challenges are enormous.
�Even though it has been a long and tortuous journey, we are ever committed to upholding our dignity and uplifting the lives of our people from the grip of ignorance, poverty and diseases,� he said.
In a keynote address read on his behalf at a day�s national dialogue held in Accra yesterday, President Mahama said, although Ghana had had its fair share of woeful struggles in the past, with good leadership, a collective determination and the commitment to multi-party democracy, Ghana had become a peaceful democratic nation, a safe haven and a beacon of hope for Africa.
The dialogue, organised by the Ministry of Defence, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was on the theme: �Sustaining Peace, Human Security and Democratic Governance for accelerated Development in Ghana�.
�Instability in any one country has ramifications for other countries, since our destinies as Africans are tied together,� President Mahama told the participants, drawn from the security services, the Diplomatic Corps, the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS), the All Africa Students Union, civil society groups and the media.
�The examples of strife-torn neighbouring countries are there to help us understand that when a country loses the struggle for peace, security and good governance, it is all the citizens that lose � there are no winners,� he said.
President Mahama said in view of that, there was no alternative to citizens giving of their best �to project Ghana as a land of peace, human security and democratic governance by rooting out injustice, crime, corruption and all forms of nation-wrecking activities�.
In his welcoming address, Mark Owen Woyongo, the Minister of Defence said �the contribution of poverty to breeding terrorism, drug trafficking and the penetration of small arms and light weapons from conflict zones to relatively peaceful and stable nations such as Ghana, called for this high level dialogue�.
He said he believed the dialogue would trigger efforts to deliberate and find strategies to deal effectively with issues relating to the sustenance of peace, human security and democratic governance.
Borrowing from Dr Kwame Nkrumah�s linking of Ghana�s independence to the liberation of Africa, he said, �The peace and security of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with peace, human security and democratic governance tenets of the African region.�
The Australian High Commissioner to Ghana, Ms Joanna Adamson, commended Ghana for �taking the election dispute to court and not to the street�.
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