Stop complaining, kick out Foreign Telenovelas and preserve our Culture with local content — Enock Agyepong fires Tourism Ministry

For the past week our Deputy Miniter for Tourism, Arts & Culture have been complaining about losing our CULTURE as a people especially in the Creative Space and I strongly believe it should be a concern to all of us as a Country.

The big question is Na Who Cause Am?

One of the strongest tools in shaping the Culture of a Country is through Radio & TV especially Television and Sensible Countries have used their Creative industries to Shape the Cultural Values of their Citizens positively.

Growing up we had the privilege of watching programs sponsored by our National Broadcaster GBC like Thursday Theater, Osofo Dadzie, Obra and the rest which indeed shaped our lives subconsciously.

However with the introduction of Private Television Stations and some owned by foreigners they also introduced foreign Soap Operas which portrayed their foreign Cultures into our system. Gradually we saw our Citizens having wedding ceremonies influenced by these Cultures and having children and giving them names adopted from these foreign soap operas.

Overtime the citizens developed a wild taste for these soap operas and the introduction of more Tv Channels saw the influx of more soap operas and due to our weak laws in protecting local contents these foreign soap operas is now the order of the day.

It’ll only take an idiot to think that these foreign soap operas do not influence our Culture because we as humans grow to become what we read, watch & listen to. Today Pragia is a living testimony of a foreign Cultural influence on our Society.

The worse part of this journey is that these soap operas have driven our local movie and series Actors and Directors out of business.
These Soap Operas didn’t only influence our culture but actually collapsed our Movie industry since these old soap operas are outmoded and therefore cheaper to acquire than our local productions.

The disastrous part of this senseless journey is when our own people started translating these foreign soap operas into our local languages. Need I say more.

These translations were assisted by some of our own local movie directors and today they have been given Government appointments into very sensitive parts of our Creative Industry and you ask yourself are we really people who care about our CULTURE or it’s just mere rhetorics?

All these were perpetuated because of the Greed for Money and therefore the Citizens can rot for all they care because if someone who did something worse like this can be promoted to a higher position by the government then what sense does it make in the same government complaining about our CULTURE after deliberately destroying it?

Sadly it has once again taken foreigners to also raise concerns about the influx of these soap operas and how it affects our Culture and apart from Hitz 103.9 FM that touched on it briefly I’m yet to hear any serious debate on this topic because Most of our Tv Channels are guilty of this nonsense all in the name of money so to hell with our Culture.

We’ll wait and see what steps the Deputy Minister of Tourism, Arts & Culture will take in this regard since he has the Power to make Changes that can Shape our CULTURE instead of joining the complaining wagon of some of us “who don’t have power” to make those Changes.

Today’s world is fighting a war of Cultural Imposition so Ghana must wake up from its current state of Sleep and start producing to also push our Content to the world instead of always being at the receiving end.

Last but not the least the Culture of Insults which we can say has been influenced especially by our Politicians who are always at each other’s throats in the name of Power must be toned down moving forward because as young people we shall all grow and I don’t believe we’ll be happy when our young ones also disrespect us instead of standing for us to take a seat on a bus.

In conclusion some have also raised concerns about the seemingly Cheeky & Arrogant Attitude of our complaining Deputy Minister as well and we believe that also has to do with our Cultural values so let’s all heal ourselves from this Foreign CULTURAL disease we’ve all brought on ourselves via our Weak and Greedy Leadership so we can all with one concerted effort build a Positive Country with our own CULTURAL Values.

#VhimMoveMent

(Story: Enock Agyepong)