“Integrity is telling myself the truth. Honesty is telling the truth to
other people.” --- R. L. Vella in, Silent Voices of the Soul….. NPP is
building Castles in the Air with their free SHS mirage
The article posted on October 14th 2012 and attributed to the NPP-USA
Public Relations Committee that slams his Excellency President Mahama is full
of misinformation and disinformation to throw dust in the eyes of the
Ghanaian electorates. They described President Mahama as wicked and selfish,
creating a wrong impression that he does not want Ghanaian youth to enjoy free
education that he enjoyed during the Nkrumah’s regime.
But President Mahama, by virtue of his pragmatic and practical vision for
our country Ghana, would have been the first person to advocate and
implement free SHS for Ghanaian children if he sees it feasible. He is just
facing a reality, bearing in mind what President Bill Clinton of the US said in
his 1999 elections campaign, “What we believe is what works.”
The free education that Ghanaian children used to enjoy during the Nkrumah’
s regime was due to the fact that, the then Ghana’s population was
between 4.5 to 5 million, with the main source of revenue as cocoa and gold,
hence there was no much pressure on other sectors that attracted government
subvention. However, with the current explosive population of the country,
which is over 25 million, it is highly impossible to provide quality and
efficient free education to the ever increasing number of the country's high
school students.
But the NPP presidential candidate in his desperate bid to avoid another
devastating defeat is trying to build castles in the air and is
promising heaven on earth. Even a leading member of their party, Gabbey Okerey
Darko of Dankwa- Busia Center criticized Nana Addo and told him to beware of
this utopian promise.
However, it was Ghana First, an academic think-tank of University
lecturers, who alerted Ghanaians last week, that the NPP free SHS educational
promise is a fantasy and a fallacy. They disclosed at a press conference
last week that,” the NPP free education policy for Ghana is unattainable”.
This was a result of a survey they conducted to ascertain the feasibility
or otherwise of the implementation of this policy.
This people are not politicians, for the NPP to allege their allegiance to
the ruling NDC party, but they are an independent, high-ranking and
non-partisan members of the academia, who are always observing policies through
the lens of objectivity, by making critical analysis of these policies.
In case the Public Relations Committee of the NPP US, their presidential
candidate as well as their cronies have not read or heard about this news, I
hereby cut and pasted an excerpt from their findings, which is
interspersed with facts and figures for them to read. They can find the full article
dated Friday October 12, 2012 when they log on Ghanaweb and click on the
Archived News link.
[[Ghana First, an academic think tank of some university lecturers, on
Friday said infrastructure in the country’s Junior High Schools (JHS) and
Senior High Schools (SHS) is woefully inadequate to accommodate the New
Patriotic Party’s (NPP) free SHS policy……This year alone, 376,859 candidates sat
for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) to fill 175,000
vacancies in the existing SHS schools nationwide. The vacancy available leaves
a surplus of 201,000 pupils who will not be able to gain admission into the
SHS.
These 201,000 are unable to enter the SHS not because of cost but because
of infrastructure deficit which includes laboratory space, dining halls
space, Information Communication Technology space.
Dr. Hayford said: “it must be possible, for instance, for Ghana
Educational Service (GES) to increase pre-school education infrastructure to cater
for kindergarten children when the mothers have to work to subsidize the
family income.”
“It should also be possible for GES to increase organized classes for the
57.5 per cent adult illiteracy in our country, in order to assist rapid
dissemination of information to accelerate growth”.
On Science Laboratories the survey said the study of science and the
desire to study science is less encouraging because there are no science
laboratories in the public JHS.
“The study of science at the basic level without experiments becomes
abstract, and is mainly based on wild imaginations,” the Group stated.
Financial analysis focusing on Greater Accra Region indicates that in
2011, a total of 54,315 JHS pupils graduated from the JHS system in Greater
Accra Region alone.
There are currently a total of 45 SHS (second cycle) institutions in
Greater Accra Region (511 SHS nationwide).
“If the 54,315 SHS students who completed in 2011 are to be shared equally
among the 45 SHS in the region, each of these 45 SHS will be compelled to
admit 1,207 students going by NPP’s proposal.
“If we conservatively assume that there will be 45 students per each class
at the SHS level, Greater Accra alone will need 27 Form One classroom
blocks per each of the 45 SHS currently available.
“If we assume further that each of the 45 SHS in Greater Accra Region
already has 10 of the 27 required Form One classroom space currently available,
then there will be a deficit of 17 Form One classroom blocks per each of
these 45 SHS currently available.
“If we then multiply the 17 Form One classroom blocks required by the 45
SHS currently available, Greater Accra alone will require a total of 765
Form One classroom blocks by 2913 for NPP’s educational policy to take off,”
Dr Hayford said.
The Group explained that working with a conservative estimate of 180,000
Ghana cedis, (this is the amount for constructing a complete JHS block taken
from National Development Planning Commission documents) if we multiply
the required number of classroom blocks in Greater Accra 765 by this
conservative amount (180,000 Ghana cedis), NPP’s free quantity-based SHS education
will cost 137,700,000 million Ghana cedis for Greater Accra alone.
There are 511 SHS country-wide. Now Greater Accra (with 45 SHS) carries
9.2 per cent of the cost. The nation-wide projection will therefore cost
1,370,000,000 (1.37 billion) Ghana cedis.’’]]
If anything at all, these findings really exposed the ignorance of the
arrogant and aggressive NPP’s Nana Akufo Addo about education, it also
presupposes that, he and the NPP never made any research to ascertain and
establish wheather their policy is attainable or not. They always claim that they
have intellectuals and people who know ‘book’, but these findings truly
exposed their mediocrity and their attempt to take Ghanaians for a ride. We
therefore challenge the NPP to come out boldly and prove if Ghana First
think tank research finding are not authentic.
The desperate situation that the NPP and Nana Addo find themselves in
could be likened to a man in his desperate love of a woman, promising her all
kinds of luxuries and lavishness but, after getting intimate with her, he
tends to give excuses and procrastinates his promises to her. This is exactly
what the NPP and Nana Addo will be doing to Ghanaians, if he is voted into
power, because it will be there and then that, having been in power, he
will be inundated with
so many competing socio-economic projects and thereby make him see the
realities in what the experienced President Mahama is now telling him.
But Ghanaians will not vote for him to end up giving them such excuses,
after all, thanks to Ghana First academic think tank, they are now well aware
that, he is just power drunk to satisfy his personal whims and caprices,
and does not have tangible and realistic policies for their interest.
He thought Ghanaians parents are stupid to let him deceive them, after his
NPP government produced schools under trees, during their full eight years
in office,(which we have replaced and still replacing with thousands of
decent school structures) and to give him their mandate to provide his
mediocre ‘free education’, full of deficiencies, which will hinder the academic
development of their children, who represent the dynamism, vibrancy and
vitality of the country’s future.
Nana Addo should do a sober reflection on the wisdom from a social
psychologist, Herbert Bayard Swope and it will be dawn on him why Ghanaians will
not vote for him. He says, “I cannot give you the formula for success, but
I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Trying to please
everybody(with false promises).”
So in a bid to please Ghanaians with their empty promises of SHS, they
resorted to castigation and blackmailing the President that he does not want
Ghanaian children to enjoy free education. But interestingly, the hard
working Ghanaian parents know that, given the economic challenges the country
faces, as a spill over from the global economic melt-down, it will not be
immediately possible for them to have free education for their children. A
clear testimony happened about a month ago when the President met some Mokola
women traders, they told him that they do not buy Nana Addo’s free SHS,
which they think he is misleading them, adding that, since they are hard
working, they will pay for their children’s education.
So NPP and Nana Addo, brave yourselves for another overwhelming defeat,
come December 7th, 2012, since your “Merchandise” is not selling in the
market place of the Ghanaian electorates.
Husseini Y. Baba AlWaiz, Press Secretary, NDC New York
