Better Ghana Agenda Skipped Kperisi School

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Garden City, New York

Feb. 29, 2016

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

There are legions of Kperisis in the country where the much-touted “Better Ghana Agenda” has yet to make a desirable dent. Kperisi, of course, refers to that basic – or elementary – school in the Wa municipality, in the Upper-West Region, where several hundred pupils had reportedly been taking lessons while sitting on the bare floor for at least a year now, even as Messrs. John Dramani Mahama and Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, president and vice-president, respectively, took their electioneering campaign roadshow around the country bragging about the fiber optic wiring up of nearly every public school in synch with the global cybernetic wave.

What makes the situation even more outrageous is that barely a week ago, President Mahama told a packed chamber of Ghana’s Parliament that of the 200 Senior High Schools that he promised to add to the existing national public stock, in a bid to creating more opportunities for highly qualified but woefully underprivileged Junior High School graduates, 123 were already under construction and nearing completion. Well, as of this writing, we had been apprised by an expert observer on the ground that in reality funding had been made available, through the release of a $156 million World Bank grant, for only 23 Senior High Schools (See “SONA 2016: Six Key Issues in Education the President Got Completely Wrong – VIAM Africa” Modernghana.com 3/1/16).

What this obviously means is that President Mahama literally lied through his teeth when he asserted in his most recent State-of-the-Nation Address (SONA) that 123 out of the promised 200 Senior High Schools were under construction. This is interesting because at the Kperisi Basic School, the government has been running a furniture deficit of some 500 desks and chairs for quite a number of years now; and it had to take the timely intervention of Alhaji-Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the Vice-Presidential Candidate of the country’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), who ordered that many pieces of furniture to be made for the school, to bring smiles onto the innocent faces of the Kperisi pupils who have literally been rolling in the dirt.

The problem was solved a la the proverbial Road to Kukurantumi, when the principal, or headmistress, of the school, Ms. Rosina Die – some versions of the news report had her last name spelt “Diedong” – made a passionate public appeal for assistance. This bold and courageous act is alleged to have riled up the NDC-dominated membership of the Kperisi District Assembly which demanded an unqualified apology from Headmistress Die or Diedong. The basis of this apology demand is not clear to yours truly, since the Kperisi assembly members cannot pretend to have been unaware of the plight of these pupils who may well be their relatives, to varying degrees, as well.

In other words, these Kperisi local politicians could not candidly claim to have been deliberately embarrassed by Headmistress Die/Diedong. They had simply been exposed in broad daylight for their abject and gross incompetence. And they know poll-wise that their days are numbered, thus their crassly impudent attempt to scapegoat Ms. Die/Diedong. And as if she has not been mentally and emotionally “Gitmoed” enough, now we hear that some thuggish NDC-sponsored urchins in the Kperisi community are threatening the life of Auntie Rosina. And here, a strong signal must be sent to these cynical and unconscionable rascals that if any harm comes to Auntie Rosina, these NDC Abongo Boys would rue the very dates of their births.

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