NPP introduced school fees into Ghana – Asiedu Nketia

General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has accused the New Patriotic Party (NPP) tradition of being the cause of the unaffordability of education in the country.

He says free, universal and compulsory education from primary school to the university was introduced by Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah immediately after independence but that was scuppered by the National Liberation Movement (NLM).

“Then came 1966 when there was the overthrow of Dr Nkrumah. The first school fees was introduced under the NLC government, which were the progenitors of the NPP tradition,” Mr Asiedu Nketia told journalists on Thursday, February 27.

He was speaking in reaction to comments by members of the opposition NPP that the NDC government stole the idea of free secondary education from NPP’s 2012 election campaign.

“The ideas are not the ideas of NPP,” the NDC General Secretary, popularly called General Mosquito, insisted. “The idea of free education was the brainchild of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s CPP.”

He further explained that the policy has been in the constitution of the country and also in the 2012 manifesto of the NDC.

“The Constitution talks about access, availability and other things. You cannot have access when you don’t have the infrastructure. That was why we developed our manifesto based on infrastructure.”

Government’s rollout of free secondary education is expected to begin in the 2015/2016 academic year, President John Dramani Mahama announced last Tuesday when he appeared in Parliament to deliver the state-of-the-nation address.

Mr Asiedu Nketia said: “The Constitution established an order of priority. It talks about access, quality before affordability. That is the order in which we are tackling the education problems."

Providing free secondary education was a flagship campaign message of NPP’s Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo during the electioneering period of 2012.

According to Mr Asiedu Nketia, the NDC is ready to engage the NPP “anywhere and let them prove to Ghanaians that Nana Addo generated an idea from his own thinking”.