Kwame Nkrumah is incomparable – Dr Tony Aidoo

A leading member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr Tony Aidoo, has decried the unsteady pace of development in the country.

According to him, Ghana’s failure to achieve desirable development after 56 years of independence was because the country lacked a strong philosophical foundation.

Speaking on Accra-based Joy FM in response to a report by the Forum for Education Reform on the state of education in the country, Dr Aidoo noted that the setback in Ghana’s educational sector was due to the lack of a philosophical foundation of education.

The report was sponsored by policy think tank, IMANI Ghana.

The group, made up of educationists, industry players and researchers is working together with government to improve standards of education in the country.

Dr Aidoo who was recently nominated ambassador-designate and previously headed the government’s Policy Monitoring and Evaluation unit, noted that the inability of the educational sector to meet the challenges of the job market was because the country faced the difficulty of providing qualitative training for the up-and-coming youth.

“There is a total mismatch between our educational system and our nation building effort… Our human resource is so handicapped because the system of knowledge being imparted is fundamentally flawed,” he said.

Dr Aidoo further noted that the drawback in the developmental efforts of the country was also due to the lack of a philosophy for economic growth and development.

“When I was in Cape Coast University I started the culture of public lectures and one of the things I used to talk about was the developmental path we have taken and I had a prognosis that we will never develop if we don’t change our modules of development.

“I believe that the period of progressive policies that this country ever experienced was during Kwame Nkrumah’s time and since then we have been marking time. I have not seen any president or leader that has a vision beyond Nkrumah. He was single minded. He was going to industrialize Ghana and he set out to build the factories,” he said.

Dr Aidoo stated that although Dr Kwame Nkrumah was caught in the strait jacket of the East-West Cold War, he was not dissuaded from implementing his vision “and today we see edifices of that vision.”

“The point therefore is this; development is not just a matter of doing the everyday things but going beyond the ordinary and to go beyond the ordinary you must have a strong philosophical foundation,” he emphasized.