B/A, Volta Don’t Deserve Universities

Ambrose Derry: NPP MP & Minority Leader Declares

News Desk Report

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Nandon, Mr. Ambrose Derry has been captured on tape stating that it is unnecessary and undeserved for President J.E.A Mills to sponsor the construction of two universities in the Volta Region and the Brong Ahafo regions of Ghana.

As far as the opposition MP is concerned, it is a grievous mistake that President Mills will select the two regions as beneficiaries of the university projects and that the Volta and the Brong Ahafo regions cannot be said to be worthy of such investment.

Speaking to a caucus of the Tertiary Students Confederacy (TESCON) an NPP youth wing in the Wa campus of the University of Development Studies (UDS), the MP who doubles as the Deputy Minority Leader in the Ghanaian Parliament told the conference that the President Mills government has been grossly unfair to the people of the northern sector by putting up two universities in the Volta Region and the Brong Ahafo regions.

The NPP MP and leader of Parliament suggested that the government should have rechanneled the resources for the two universities into expanding the infrastructural base of the University of Development Studies (UDS), although there is an ongoing programme to improve that university’s infrastructure. In his obviously tainted mind, the NPP MP mentioned the Upper East and Upper West campuses of the UDS as the schools that should have been given the infrastructure to be constructed in the Volta Region and Brong Ahafo regions. In a desperate attempt to pollute the minds of the NPP youth so as to cause disaffection for the President Mills-led NDC government, the Mr. Ambrose Derry descended into preaching more ethnocentrism and shamelessly went on air to defend his preaching when he was called by Joy FM’s news night crew, on Monday evening.

Facing up to the illogical analyses and ethnocentric thoughts that the NPP Parliamentarian was propagating, the Director of Communications at the Presidency, Mr. Koku Anyidoho lampooned Mr. Derry and consequently dismissed the MP who was supposed to no better.

A surprised Mr. Anyidoho wondered as to whether the people of the Volta Region and the Brong Ahafo regions do not deserve universities, as the Northern Region has one with campuses in the Upper East and Upper West regions. Koku Anyidoho explained that the government is continuing with the expansion programmes of UDS, and that it will only be the imagination of an incompetent and obviously ethnocentric mind, for anybody to suggest that the government is abandoning such works in order to construct two universities.

The President’s chief communicator said: “The government’s programme to expand the infrastructural base of this country is on course and that the construction of the two universities in the Volta region and the Brong Ahafo region will not retard the progress of work on other infrastructural projects being undertaken.” The government in an earlier announcement restated its commitment to expand the infrastructural base of this country and that it had made the necessary budgetary support for such exercises.

"Nothing is going to excite these people about President Mills. I have said it time and again that if President Mills brings Jesus Christ down to Ghana, they will have cause to say that President Mills went up to the heavens and bribed Jesus Christ to come to Ghana" he stated.

He said the construction of the universities is in fulfillment of major campaign promises made by the NDC during the 2008 elections.

Asked how much it will cost and the source of funding for the construction of the universities the Head of Communications said the project is in phases and could take ten years to complete.

The first phase, he said, will take about one-three years to complete and that will be funded with the GETFund.

He chided the NPP for doing nothing to improve the infrastructure at the UDS having stayed in power for eight years, adding, “If the NDC had been in power between 2001 and 2008 the UDS will not have been in the state that it is in today.”

UDS which was founded by the ex-President Jerry John Rawlings regime, with a seed capital of US$50,000 which was a prize money the former Ghanaian leader won from an international think-thank on good governance.

Although the Volta Region and the Brong Ahafo Region were established more than 55 and 50 years ago, respectively, NPP’s Ambrose Derry maintains that until the UDS campuses in the Upper East and West regions (founded about 25 years ago) are turned into full blown universities the Volta and the Brong Ahafo regions (which are older) do not deserve universities.