General News of 2012-10-22

“NDC’s Position on Free SHS keeps shifting” – Bawumia

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, running mate to Nana Akufo-Addo, says the ruling National Democratic Congress led by President John Dramani Mahama has shown inconsistency and is constantly shifting its position on the NPP’s pledge of making secondary school education free.

The NPP Vice-Presidential candidate made the comments on Saturday while speaking at the Wa Campus of the University of Development Studies (UDS), to hundreds of students in the Wa Municipality, on various issues concerning the governance of the nation as part as activities on the third day of his Upper West Region tour .

Taking his time to delve into the free Secondary education pledge of the NPP, Dr. Bawumia said, “When we say that we are going to introduce free secondary school education, the NDC, our main political opponents, go about saying it cannot be done. Well actually, their story and positions keep changing. First they said it wasn’t possible just like they said the NHIS wasn’t possible. Then they said well we have to wait for 20 years before we can do it. Now, the argument their position is that we have to build the infrastructure.

But even on the infrastructure argument, in our policy is the plan to build 350 new secondary schools as contained in our manifesto, so their argument doesn’t make sense because we are not ignorant of the fact that we have to expand the school infrastructure.”

Dr. Bawumia stated that the NDC’s latest position on the free Secondary education program is a flawed argument, as it did not take into account reality and the history of such programmes. He informed the students that at the time Ghana’s first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, decided to introduce free education, which the current President happened to be a beneficiary of, there was only one middle school in the whole of Northern Ghana.

“Indeed if Nkrumah had decided to go by the argument the NDC is making now, we would still not have had enough schools to make education free in the north today, so we would do what is best for Ghana’s children and what is practicable, we would build the infrastructure simultaneously while the policy is also rolled out,” he said.

Dr. Bawumia noted the NDC’s hypocrisy in championing the argument of infrastructure as they were the same government which had set up two universities without the infrastructure required saying “in any case, there are more facilities to start free secondary education than facilities at the two universities to start a full university so it’s really hypocritical for them to be making the arguments they are making.”

The third day of Dr. Bawumia’s tour of the Upper West region saw him touring numerous communities in the Lambussie and Sissala West Constituencies.