Learn not to condone illegality – MoE to Mahama

The Ministry of Education has urged former President John Mahama to learn to live above partisanship and desist from turning a blind eye to illegalities in his bid to score political points.

The admonition follows Mr Mahama defending his party’s Deputy National Organizer Joshua Akamba whose visit to the Tempane SHS caused firestorm leading to the suspension of the School’s headmaster, after he Akamba was seen in a viral video inciting the students against President Akufo Addo.

According to Mahama, visiting secondary schools was a regular feature of the NPP’s campaign when they were in opposition and he was President.

Headteacher Ndegu Amolale has been suspended by the Ghana Education Service for allowing Mr. Akamba, who is canvassing to be national organiser of the opposition NDC, to meet the students in breach of regulations governing secondary education in the country.

Addressing a crowd at the Wa campus of the University of Development Studies in the Upper West region, Mahama said the NDC took such things as visiting a school to campaign for granted when they were in power.

“ We were in government and there was somebody he was always in the schools and playing politics and yet we never sacked any headmaster, we never sacked any teacher because you have gone into a school. Then one of our aspirants for a certain position goes to a school and the students show him how bedbugs have chewed them and had a discourse with them. Then you suspend the headmaster and you say he should handover and you are investigating him. Investigating him for what.

“The schools have children who are 18 years and above and they vote. And in our time in office, we allowed the opposition to go into the schools. That is the problem with NPP, they are highly intolerant. Things that we took for granted they won’t take for granted. And so the poor headmaster has been suspended. And I hope the investigation exonerates him. And the investigators should know that when they were in opposition they did the same thing,” Mahama told the gathering as part of his campaign to lead the NDC again for the 2020 elections.

But reacting to ex President Mahama’s comments in an interview with Kasapa News, the Public Relations Officer of the Education Ministry, Ekow Vincent Assafuah urged the former first gentleman to rather always seek to abide by the rules governing institutions.

“What is wrong is wrong, the fact that somebody perpetrated such illegality in 2015/2016 does not mean we should allow those wrongs to also go on. Don’t say because you allowed these illegalities to go on when you were in power, it must be allowed now. This doesn’t make you tolerant, a statesman of former President Mahama’s caliber who has once been in charge of the rules and laws of this country should never be making such statements. This is reprehensible to say the least.”