IPLS Boss Alex Nartey Esq. Says Ethics, Not English, Will Fix Ghana

Story by Fada Amakye

Mr. Alex Nartey Esq. Executive of the Institute of Paralegal Training & Leadership Studies, says Ghana’s development crisis is a leadership crisis, and “the right leadership is the antidote to everything.

Speaking at the opening of IPLS’s 3-Day Intensive Mediation Practice Workshop, Nartey said the free training is targeting moral consciousness because “leadership is everything — from the nuclear family up to the national level.”

“Your nation can be located on land that bears no fruit, and as we can see, some countries on desert are developed, while those of us in green forest areas like Ghana go there to see development and comfort,” he said. “When we are comparatively better than them, it suggests to you that it’s about leadership.

He argued that leadership must be “guided… premised upon certain principles, and these principles are ethics and integrity.” Without them, he warned, “you may have all the resources, you may be given all the resources, but you put it to waste.

Nartey criticized Ghana’s obsession with “eloquence in English” as a measure of wisdom. “Today in our politics we pride ourselves with speaking good English… Once he speaks the way the Ghanaian expects him to speak, he qualifies, and we don’t care whether he’s conveying implementable ideas or not.

If it’s about English, China would have not been what it is today. If it’s about English, Japan will not be producing cars for us,” he said. “We’ve gotten to a point where we must all come back and think.

He said IPLS believes “leadership training among non-lawyers is a panacea to some of the policy crises that we have,” because “one does not need to be a lawyer to have a fair appreciation of the laws that affect his or her operations.

The 3-day workshop brought together about 150 Ghanaians committed to national growth. Though costly to organize, Nartey said IPLS made it free because “it’s so urgent, it’s so necessary that people must not struggle to be part of it. The Institute plans to hold it twice a year, with the next edition slated for December.

Nartey concluded that Ghana “has a very long way to go” because “when you listen to the average Ghanaian politician… you can say that we have leadership deficit, serious one.”

The workshop aims to “establish moral consciousness among some Ghanaians whose involvement in what we do as a nation will be of so much help.