Mahama has shifted position on free SHS because he has been proven wrong – NPP

The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has urged Ghanaians to disregard John Dramani Mahama’s seeming interest in the free Senior High School (SHS) project because it is merely an afterthought.

NPP National Organiser, Sammi Awuku, told journalists at a press conference on Thursday, August 13, 2020, that the Presidential Candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is only making the promise to improve the free SHS because he has been proven wrong about the programme.

Mr Mahama has said, contrary to popular concerns, he will not cancel the programme that has been criticised for weighing too heavily on national coffers if he is elected as President on December 7.

Proponents of the free SHS say it makes secondary school education, which is critical for higher education in Ghana and other parts of the world, accessible to all Ghanaians.

John Mahama's government, when he was President, rejected the idea. It argued at the time that infrastructural challenges will make immediate implementation untenable, opting for what it calls 'Progressive free SHS'.

However, Nana Akufo-Addo won the elections in 2016 based, partly, on the promise to make SHS education completely free.

Speaking at the press conference on Thursday, Sammi Awuku said: “having seen that it is possible because President Nana Addo Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has implemented it, John Dramani Mahama now says that if he is elected, he will implement free SHS. But the thing has been implemented already.

“Should Ghanaians replace the man who dreamed it, believed it and delivered it for one who never believed it, ridiculed it and fought against it?”

The press conference at the Swiss Spirit Hotel in Accra was held by the governing party to respond to some claims the John Dramani Mahama 2020 campaign has made.

“Mahama says that in the unlikely event that he is elected President again, he will implement Akufo-Addo’s free SHS programme…how do you implement a programme that is already running?

“Candidate Mahama, why now? You were in power as Vice President and Head of the Economic Management Team for almost four years and as President of the Republic also for another four years and some four months. In total, you have been in power for some eight good years, yet Mr Mahama you failed to implement the free SHS,” he said.

According to Sammi Awuku, John Mahama’s belated endorsement of the free SHS is, from his own record, not an honest position.