Ghanaian Governments and politicians, according to a former presidential candidate, Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, have no interest whatsoever in ensuring there is compulsory basic education in Ghana.
The country’s 1992 Constitution requires successive Governments to implement a ‘Free Compulsory and Universal Basic Education’ system, within the first 12 years of the life of the Constitution.
It has been 22 years since the Fourth Republican Constitution, but none of the Governments Ghana has had so far has been able to make basic education free or compulsory.
Dr Nduom puts the failure down to the indifference of politicians and successive governments about the policy.
“When I say Governments, I don’t just mean the Mahama administration. Since 1992, we’ve had Governments or Government administrations, and none of them had even talked about compulsory education,” the former Energy Minister said.
“You are media people, you’ve heard politicians talk, you’ve heard governments talk, you’ve heard Presidents go to Parliament and talk about what they would do; I don’t believe you’ve heard any president go to Parliament, stand on a platform anywhere to talk about compulsory education.
"So it means that it’s not part of their vocabulary, it’s not in the head, it’s not in the mind, it’s not an intention, so it has to be put there and if it has to be put there, then it must be a collective effort on the part of many people to want to put it there; to want to make it a necessity for whoever runs this country to believe that it is an important part of our national life,” Nduom stressed.
