By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
She joined the heated debate on Akufo-Addo’s fee-free Senior High School policy proposal rather late, but Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings’ decision to weigh in on the side of the presidential candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) gives further credence both to the imperative need for the bumbling National Democratic Congress (NDC) to be promptly retired from power in order to position the country on the progressive path of twenty-first century education, and usher in the forward looking, imaginative and development-oriented New Patriotic Party (See “Don’t Condemn Free SHS Policy – Nana Konadu” Daily Graphic/Ghanaweb.com 11/26/12).
Maybe somebody ought to remind Caretaker-President John Dramani Mahama that desperately throwing cheaply manufactured computer laptops at schoolchildren, the way a poultry farmer throws feed at fowls, without having set up any systematic training program in the efficient use of these high-tech gadgets for tomorrow’s leaders, is as good as throwing bicycles at a school of fish – my profuse apologies to my middle school Student’s Companion. Talk of Dr. Tony Aidoo and Policy Monitoring!
Anyway, it is also quite refreshing to hear the longtime Ghanaian first lady underscore the constitutional non-negotiability of the imperative need for the Government of Ghana, irrespective of ideological orientation or electioneering campaign agenda, to immediately provide free access to basic education for all minor citizens and residents of the country. In short, in unreservedly endorsing the Akufo-Addo Education Initiative, this is what the quite influential leader of the National Democratic Party (NDP) had to say: “People should stop talking against the free Senior High School proposal and rather look at the [totality of the] education program enshrined in our Constitution. Free education is a right and has to be done; every political party has to do it. It is obligatory.”
Still, what was most significant about Mrs. Rawlings’ wholehearted endorsement of the Akufo-Addo Education Initiative was her call for a prompt and thorough reexamination of the country’s elementary and secondary school curricula in order to make learning more meaningful for Ghanaian youths, as well as make the latter more creative and productive citizens of tomorrow’s Ghana. “For me,” declared Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, “it is not the free [aspect of the AAEI that is necessarily the most crucial aspect of basic education in the country] but how we get our children to actually go to school and stay in school in order to make something, or somebodies, out of themselves.” The Life-Patron of the 31st December Women’s Movement further added, “In the three northern regions, for example, education is free but many children still drop out of school.”
It is also significant to observe the fact that Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings’ is only one among a legion of prominent Ghanaian voices to weigh in on the side of the Akufo-Addo Education Initiative. In the recent past, the late Vice-President Aliu Mahama, retired University of Ghana Vice-Chancellor, Prof. George Benneh, Mr. Osafo Maafo and Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, to name but a handful, have unreservedly endorsed the Akufo-Addo Education Initiative as one of the most progressive means of investing the country’s new-found oil revenue.
That the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress clearly appears to have recklessly chosen the proverbial primrose path of wastefully spending the country’s hard-earned monetary resources in bribing their way back to power is not only unpardonably criminal, it is also morally indefensible. And it is firmly hoped that patriotic and well-meaning Ghanaian voters will bear the foregoing in mind, even as they enter the polling booth on December 7th to determine the socioeconomic, cultural and political destiny of our beloved motherland, and fatherland, for the next four years.
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###