LET'S CELEBRATE WITH CARE

TO say that Ghanaians in every nook and cranny of the country were thrown into a frenzy following the spectacular victory of the Black Stars over their Guinean counterparts is an understatement.
Indeed, the spontaneous manner in which people came out of their homes onto the streets in their numbers was indicative of what the victory meant for them as individuals and as a nation.
In the jubilation, political, religious and ethnic differences were all shelved and, with one accord, every Ghanaian showed that sometimes it was good to speak with one voice when the national interest is concerned.
However, there is a bad side to our celebrations, be they national, traditional, religious or personal, and this is what the DAILY GRAPHIC wants to draw people’s attention to.
The tendency among our people, especially the youth, to lose their heads when it is celebration time leaves much to be desired. While it is good to, once in a while, get into the celebration mood and let oneself go, it is also very proper to bear in mind that even as the celebrations go on, the laws of the land must still be obeyed, so that one does not fall foul of those laws and thus infringe on other people’s rights.
All over the country, our reporters have sent reports of wild jubilations in cities, towns and villages, some of them going beyond what is reasonable and acceptable.
Considering the suspenseful nature of last Sunday’s match, one cannot blame people for letting themselves go when Sulley Muntari fetched the match winner in the nick of time. But if, in the course of that celebration, we block roads, leading to traffic jams, burn tyres on the roads which have been constructed with the taxpayer’s money and generally become a nuisance to other members of the public, then we need to be cautioned.
The Police Administration thinks so, too, and that is why, in an interview with the DAILY GRAPHIC, the Director of the Police Public Affairs Directorate, DSP Kwesi Ofori, expressed concern over the manner in which Ghanaians celebrated last Sunday’s victory.
All of us must take DSP Ofori’s caution, when he said “what is wrong is wrong, irrespective of the occasion”, in good faith because the DAILY GRAPHIC does not think it is proper to leave a sour taste in our mouths after the celebrations because there have been broken limbs, damaged roads and vehicles and confrontations with the police resulting from irresponsible celebrations.
The 26th Africa Cup of Nations has brought with it a lot of goodwill, unity, nationalism, economic gains and, above all, a reason to feel Ghanaian and so we must relish those positive attributes of the tournament, instead of letting wild and outrageous celebrations get the better of us.
In the opinion of the DAILY GRAPHIC, by all means soccer fans must celebrate every victory of the Black Stars on their way to winning the ultimate, but it also cautions that we must be circumspect in our celebrations, so that none of us gets to be on the wrong side of the law. That will surely be an anti-climax we are not ready for.
While we are at it, we also call on the police to exhibit a great sense of maturity when they have to deal with any fallout from victory celebrations. This is because the mood of the times may sometimes be intoxicating, making people throw caution to the winds. Should the police decide to meet such celebrants boot for boot, the end result may be dysfunctional to the body politic.
We know there are many victories ahead of us in the course of the tournament but we plead with our compatriots to celebrate these victories with caution, for Mother Ghana deserves just that.