Information available to The Daily Searchlight newspaper indicates that the Managing Editor of The Insight newspaper, Mr. Kwesi Pratt Jnr., Ghana’s leading socialist, is allegedly paying an amount of 560 million old cedis a year to enable her daughter acquire the best education in th e United Kingdom.
Maame Ama Pratt, who a few years ago was a student at the University of Ghana, Legon, is currently studying law at the Buckingham University, a privately owned university in the United Kingdom.
According to information, Mr. Pratt, who is best known to be a social democrat journalist and doubles as a member of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), allegedly pays a whooping £22,760 (GH¢56,900) per annum for his daughter’s education in the private British university.
Well noted for his viscerally opposition to everything that has something to do with UP/NPP’s property owning or profligacy, The Insight Managing Editor finds it apparently convenient to pay such huge pounds sterling in Atta Mills led Government to cater for his daughter’s expensive fees abroad.
When the Daily Searchlight newspaper called his office to speak to him about the information, one Kwesi Doudu who described himself as Editor of The Insight, stated that his boss was in a meeting.
According to him, his boss asked him to collect whatever information the paper wanted on a piece of paper so that he could respond after his meeting - but he failed to honour his promise.
As a staunch executive member of the Socialist Forum and the Committee for Joint Action (CJA) who accused the Kufuor administration of profligacy spending, one would have thought that Mr. Pratt would not have involved himself in the very “crimes” he constantly accused others of having committed.
Most Ghanaians would recall that Mr. Pratt raised moral issues about the purchase of a hotel owned by the son of the then President, John Agyekum Kufuor and also vehemently opposed the sale of Ghana Telecom to a foreign company (Vodafone).
Our checks have revealed that Buckingham is a very unique institution. It is the only independent university in the UK with a Royal Charter and probably the smallest in terms of population around 1,000 students. Honours degrees are achieved in two intensive years of study. The school has a small class sizes, with a student-academic staff ratio of 8:1 and the Oxbridge style tutorial groups are often personalized and always exhilarating.
The University campus is well known for being one of the most attractive locations in the region. The Great Ouse River, home of much wildlife, flows through the heart of the campus. Much of the school’s teaching takes place in their restored buildings such as the Franciscan Building, formerly a friary, and, Chandos Road Building, a converted turn-of-the-century milk factory, while students can also enjoy the hunter Street Library, once a military barracks.
Each student mixes with 89 other different nationalities and so being at Buckingham is just like being in a mini global village. These contacts, acquaintances and friendships, carry on long after life at Buckingham is over.