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In 1 Corinthians 13:11, the Apostle Paul says: �When l was a child, l talked like a child, l thought like a child, l reasoned like a child. When l became a man, l put my childish things away behind man.� Obviously, St Paul was comparing two phases of his life, the period when he was not converted to christainity to when he had been converted. He looked backed at his earlier life and saw that it paled into insignifigance, compared to higher knowledge that he has now acquired. He saw his reasoning then as that of a child, compared to that of an adult now. Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest inventors of all times, looking back at his life said: � l seem to have been a like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself by now, and finding a smooth pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while a great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.� What these wise sayings seem to be telling us is that in life, there is always something greater to achieve than our present circumstances determine. Indeed, life is a progression from one stage to the other. Once a higher stage is attained we move on to the next seeking new challenges and conquests. That is the way to progress and development. It is a mark of stagnation or even regression for one to still waddle and trump achievements of a stge in life that has already been tamed, especially, when there are bigger challenges out there to be subdued. One of the reasons journalists from the developed world give for not highlighting developments projects in developingcountries is that they do not find them excting anymore. Important though these projects are to the developing world, to the developed world, it cuts no ice at all with their publics because they have seen so many of such projects in various forms and shapes to be excited by another addition. What does catch their attention is for instance, when an astronaut lands on the moon; or when a dive is made into the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the sea; or when stem cells are discovered to make possible the treatment of some previously untreatable diseases. These are the things that they celebrate and not things that they have already overcome and have become an everyday way of life for them. The converse seems to be true in our dear Ghana in recent times. Of late, it has become fashionable for high ranking members of government to hold press conferences dubbed: �setting the records straight� purportedly to showcase government achievements. Nothing bad about this, one may say. In fact �setting the records straight� is not a new phenomenon by the NDC. They used it to great effect in the run-up to the 2008 elections where it was really a platform to tell lies and raise public disaffection for the government. In government now, one would have thought the NDC would find innovative ways to tell their story. If even they had to resort to their old ways, �setting the records straight� one would have thought that the NDC will use the forum to tell the truth and not resort to lies about the NPP government and pronounce phantom achievements by their government. But the NDC, in this instance, as in others, has shown that it is bereft of any new ideas. The two forums held recently, led by Mr Fiifi Kwetey, former Propaganda Secretary and now Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, have proved to be full of lies as the NPP has exposed and will continue to expose. What l find baffling about the whole episode however, is the NDC�s penchant to indulge in mediocrity. By the time the NPP came to power in 2001, Ghana had been declared by the international finance community and by the donor community to be a �highly indebted and poor country.� This meant the country was near insolvency. Nobody will pump new money into the economy. Fuel stock could last for only a few days and the country�s reserves stood at a paltry $4 billion or less than three weeks� cover. The entire police fleet of cars was just about 100. Much of Korle-Bu including the Maternity Ward was boarded and the Administration Block was an eye-sore. Health delivery itself was discriminatory as the infamous �cash and carry� system condemned the poor to premature death. Health workers, especially, doctors and nurses, left the country in droves as their working coonditions were uninspiring and their pay abysmal. The educational system was in shambles. Even in Accra, the nation�s capital, school children carried their chairs and tables to school. A great number of schools were under trees and many an impoverished parent, already faced with hard living conditions could not afford to take their children to school. Morale among teachers was low. They found their profession to be unrewarding and lost the passion for it. Many took to trading on the side and others resorted to organising extra-classes where the exorbitant fees charged helped them to get by. On the university campuses, many a leturer wondered whether opting for the academia was a wise decision; many self-respecting professors rode in rickety cars that were falling apart; the lucky ones resorted to consultancies of all sorts in order to make ends meet. Those who could not stand it left for abroad and soon, it was only the aged, those nearing retiring age that were left. The campuses no longer attracted the young and brilliant. Public mass transportation was non-existent; inter-city and intra-city travel was tedious as drivers had to master weaving their way through the maze of pot-holes on the roads; travelling on the country�s arterial roads was even more nightmarish. The country�s farmers still toiled under unrewarding ancient-old farming methods which only produced megre harvest. Cocoa, the nation�s economic back-bone, was locked at 340,000 tons a year and farmers found it more rewarding to sell their produce to neighbouring countries than to the government�s main buying agency, the Ghana Cocoa Board. The weak and indigent had no sources of relief as the state turned a blind eye to their plight. Press freedom was limited and the criminal libel law hanged like the �Sword of Damocles� over the itinerant journalist. Court rooms were parked with sweltering people as there were no air conditioners to metigate the heat; court clerks still went through the drugery of recording cases in long hand, slowing down the delivery of justice. Ghanaian-loving soccer fans looked on as their neighbours from Cameroun, Nigeria and Senegal went to one World Cup tournament after the other while their beloved Black Stars sat out in the cold and looked on from afar. Worse still, stadiums around the country were a far cry from the country�s internaternational standing in sports. Ghana still depended on the international financial institutions for aid and could not access credit on the international capital market and the NDC 1, had envisaged that Ghana will attain middle-income earning status in 2020. By the time the NPP left office, Ghana was already a middle-income earning country. It could borrow on the international capital market, one of just three African countries that had that distinction and was weaning itself off IMF, World Bank control as any matured economy should. A national health insurance scheme, which guaranteed free medical care with the payment of a premium of less than eight dollars a year for the entire family including children less than 18 years, was flourishing; pregnant mothers had free maternity care and all over the country, health workers had regained their pride of place. School fees were free for all children in public schools from the age four to 14, and first cycle education expanded to included two years of kindergarten. A policy to provide one nutritious meal a day from locally-manufactured food crops had been started; school children as well as the elderly travelled on the reactivated public mass transport for free. There were about 15 private banks operating in Ghana and for the first time, the banks went out chasing for customers to take credit. Cocoa production shot up to over 700,000 with the provision of mass spraying and payment of a higher producer price to the farmers. The projection was to hit one million tons by 2010. The economy was vibrant. Even in the teeth of the world economic crisis GDP grew by 8.4% the country�s reserves stood at over $24.85 billion. Evidence of the buoyancy of the economy was also seen in the number of major international companies that had come to set up in Ghana. These included, ADN, Bali Caribou, Cargill, Newmont, Vodaphone, etc. Oil giant Exon Mobil was on the verge of setting up shop here; plans were far advanced in creating an off-shore banking facility with Barclays International as the lead managers; building a fully integrated bauxite industry through smeltering to aluminium ingots was on high up on the cards, etc. This was the state of the economy bequeathed to the NDC by the NPP in 2009. Now, one would have thought that NDC in touting their achievements will tell the whole world what they have done to build on these gains. What new direction they have instituted to bring about paradigm shifts in the country�s socio-economic governance. Instead, and rather disappointingly, they start by comparing their achievements to the NPP�s performance in the first years, from 2001 to 2005. Taking the whole country backward by at least 10 years and even then, their record is full of distortions and outright fabrication. What this means is that NDC is comparing an economy that has attained middle-income earning status to one that was �highly indebted and poor�! The NDC needs to know that we have moved on as a country. Those projects, boreholes, KVIPS, schools and clinics which made news sometime ago, although still important, are no longer the headline grabbing news material. They are routine things that every government undertakes. What the NDC needs to tell us is what they are doing to take Ghana to the next level of development. We have gathered enough fine pebbles on the beach. It is now time to discover the wonders of the vast ocean out there.