'Education and the role of a teacher': Hon. Alban Bagbin tells his story

Hon. Alban Bagbin, Member of Parliament, (MP) and Majority Leader has said that “this year, for August alone, I have paid over Gh?43200 as school fees for students across all the educational sectors — teacher training college, Nursing training college, polytechnic, and university,” as he showed a list indicating the payments to TheBridge reporter as evidence for this story.

“Education and the roll of the teacher in education;” according to the Hon. MP, “these two are the passion that keeps me moving”. He said he had developed the passion from childhood. “How I myself got enrolled into school, I had to weep and wail to scratch my parents to allow me to go school.”

The Hon. Majority Leader said his father who believed in fairness and was polygamous with three surviving wives at that time, thought a child from each of his wives should be send to school. He said his mother was the second among the three surviving wives.

The Hon. MP who was the second child of his mother with the senior brother already in school, was “disqualified” from going to school, per his father’s decision to send only first born of each of his wives to school.

He said “the first wife’s child, we were of age mates, easily got the opportunity, the third wife’s child was ahead of us in age and was the obvious choice, but his was the opposite: he was doing everything so that he will not be sent to school, and the mother supported him, whiles I was wailing, holding my mother, and crying that I should be send to school, and so the teacher then turned to my dad, and encouraged him to rather allow me to go to school.”

He said “this is how I got to school, and so you see what education has turned me into and the role of the teacher too. If the teacher did not intervene, my father will have done everything to send the other child to school instead the teacher’s role was the deciding father.”

According to the Hon. MP, the society, especially his teachers and community elders had contributed greatly towards his education, and he took a cue from the generosity of his community to help others too to go to school.

He said he had passed his exams to attend Xavier (minor seminary in Wa) but his “dad” could not afford the fees, and so the Wa Senior High School (WASEC) became his next option for his sixth form education.

At this point, according to the Hon. MP, he had to do odd jobs and farming to pay his fees. He acknowledged that he later met Alhaji Mahama Iddirisu, a former minister of defense who supported him along the way.

He said later along the line, he had met some of his early teachers; both in the sixth form and the university now in parliament as colleagues.

He said he had taken on himself “herculean task “of doing everything to sponsor many young ones to go far more than him in life. He acknowledged that it was stressful at times, and he had “to borrow to pay fees. I believe the Lord is my strength. People get amazed how I managed to do that.”

He said even at the time he was in the university of Ghana and as President of the Upper West Students’ Union, He had organized and taught free extra classes for “O” and “A” level students at the then Wa Middle Day School for free. He had, at times, gone round to plead for chalk and teaching materials from schools and individuals to teach at the extra classes.

Also, according to him, he had developed deep value for human beings — “social skills, and emotional intelligence” from his “dad” who had hosted all kinds of visitors at his house without discrimination and treated his entire household equally; his children, all together were free with other mothers than their own mothers. He said: “I believe if I do good; I will receive more blessings from God”.

An educationist and a beneficiary of the Hon. MP's generosity, Mr. James Dassah accented that the Hon. MP was a messiah to many a needy traveller in the journey of education and life. Also, Mr. Dassah expressed shock that some people who fed at the Hon MP's finger while they were in school had now turned against him, "but such is life."