Scholarship scheme not politicised – Nsowah

The Chairman of the Ghana Education Service (GES) Council, Michael Nsowah, says it is not true the Scholarship Secretariat has been politicised.

His comment comes on the back of government directive to the Ghana Scholarship Secretariat to grant full scholarship to 150,000 students who passed for tertiary education.

Speaking to host of 3FM’s Sunrise, Mr Nsowah noted there are attempts by individuals to describe government’s gesture as political.

He said because the Scholarship Secretariat is decentralised, it becomes difficult to politicize it.

According to him, the award of scholarships is to the needy but brilliant students.

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) just on Tuesday made an amendment to its earlier campaign promise of offering partial scholarships to fresh students of public universities to full scholarship.

Many are of the view that the NDC’s plan to absorb the full fees of the students may have caused the current administration to promise full scholarship to the students who are considered “Nana Addo babies”.

According to Michael Nsowah, “by decentralising at least a few candidates who otherwise would not have gained these opportunities are normally considered for admission unlike the system which was based on those who gained aggregate 6 to 8 and so on and so forth. So we should be looking at who benefits from all the districts? That is what we need to do rather than think that because somebody had made a political statement”.

According to him, the officials go to all the districts to interview applicants by looking at their backgrounds so they support them.