Free SHS: Mahama is ‘confused’- Bawumia jabs

Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has said Former President John Dramani Mahama appears confused and as a result lacks the knowledge to review the free Senior High School policy if he comes back to power.

The response of the Vice President follows the comments made by the former President that a future National Democratic Congress (NDC) under his watch would review the Free SHS policy to make it better.

The former President who was speaking at the official opening of the 27th Annual Presidential Delegates Congress of the Ghana National Union of Technical Students on Wednesday in Kumasi said “I am determined to make the free SHS a beneficial learning experience more than the current miserable condition our children are facing under Nana Akufo-Addo.”

In a sharp response however, Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia threw a challenge to the former President to tell Ghanaians a concrete alternative policy which is better than the current double-track system adopted under the free senior high school (SHS) policy.

“If he [Mahama] had been in the position, what will he do. What are your concrete policies, don’t tell me you want to wait and be voted and you call a stakeholders meeting, that is not leadership, tell us exactly what you will do,” he said at a ceremony to inaugurate a $4.5 million fertiliser blending plant on Thursday under the governments One District One Factory policy at Asuboi in the Ayensuano District of the Eastern Region.

According to Dr Bawumia, former President John Dramani Mahama is clueless on what to do with the free SHS policy adding that “he should come out and tell us exactly what he will do because the visionary President Akufo-Addo said he will do it and he has done it.”

In the view of the Vic President, the free SHS policy would not have been alive if John Mahama has won the 2016 elections.

“I am 100 per cent certain that if John Mahama was a in office today Ghana will not have free SHS neither will we have the teacher training allowance, nurse allowance, the paperless port and also the 1D1F. it takes visionary leadership and courage and this is what we are seeing with President Akufo Addo.”

He further pointed out the inconsistencies in the position of the former President and the National Democratic Congress on the policy, a situation he found ridiculous adding that “It is the same vision that President Akufo-Addo had when he said we are going to do Free SHS in this country. There were many naysayers when we said we will do free SHS including the former President who said it was a gimmick, a misplaced priority at the time. Some even said it will take 20 years to do free SHS but President Akufo-Addo had a vision and he persisted with that vision against all the naysayers and he implemented the free SHS education in his very first year of government.”