Re: NPP-USA Slams President John Mahama

“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