GNA should tell Ghanaians the plain truth

If the Capitation Grant was introduced into the nation’s public schools in 2005, then it was clearly introduced by the Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), which held the reins of governance from January 2001 to January 2009, and not the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports. This is clearly a devious way by the anonymous reporter of the news story captioned “Capitation Grant Increases Truancy in School – Report” Ghana News Agency / Ghanaweb.com 8/24/15) to deny credit where it is clearly due. I know the Ghana News Agency is owned and operated by the government, which means any government that happens to wield the reins of governance at any material moment.

This, in effect, means that the GNA is presently controlled and operated by the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC). And so properly speaking, the GNA can only sing the proverbial RCA-fabricated gramophone vinyl disk-playing trademark popularly known a half-century ago as “His Master’s Voice” (HMV). The logo, if I remember accurately, had a dog seated by a megaphone.

Which is precisely why as the veritable propaganda mouthpiece of the Government of Ghana, the GNA lacks the credibility of such globally respected publicly-owned independent newsgathering and dissemination establishments as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and even such relatively politically-censored public media organizations as America’s National Public Radio (NPR) and the Voice of America (VOA), both of which are headquartered in Washington, DC.

It appears that the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) is finally doing something practically relevant and worthwhile towards the development of the country. But even here, I am not certain that the UNICEF-supported survey of the impact of the Capitation Grant, a decade after its implementation, as reported by the GNA, justified whatever level of financial support might have been afforded the NDPC team that conducted the same.

For starters, the Kwesi Botchwey- and Nii Moi Thompson-headed NDPC is jam-packed with left-wing ideologues with widely known affiliation and loyalty to the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress, and so it clearly lacks the kind of wholesome independence required for this type of survey. I am, however, inclined to accord the benefit of the doubt to the NDPC members who participated in the Capitation Grant survey, ten years after its clearly auspicious implementation by the erstwhile Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party. I give the NDPC the benefit of the doubt because it is quite possible for the GNA correspondent who reported on the findings of the aforementioned survey to have grossly misunderstood the findings, thus his/her rather desultory and curious interpretation of the same.

If as the GNA correspondent would have Ghanaians and the rest of the world believe, the introduction of the Capitation Grant by then-President John Agyekum-Kufuor has ten years since the said implementation caused an exponential increase in the rate of truancy of the very public schoolchildren it was intended to assist, then we need to be told precisely when an increase in such truancy, as reported by the GNA, began. Because, as I vividly recall, at the time of its implementation in 2005, the Capitation Grant was widely reported to have actually caused a doubling of both the enrollment and attendance of public schoolchildren, in many instances, across the country. This would be widely reported to be the case until some three-and-half years later when a lame-duck President Agyekum-Kufuor relinquished the reins of governance.

Our unmistakable contention here is that gross economic mismanagement by the Mills-Mahama government of the National Democratic Congress that took over from Mr. Kufuor, and subsequently the Mahama/Amissah-Arthur regime that emerged after the “mysterious” demise of President John Evans Atta-Mills, so grossly mismanaged the Capitation Grant it is no longer as productive as it had been under the stewardship of President Agyekum-Kufuor.

In reality, what we are being told is that it is not the Capitation Grant, as such, that has become practically deficient and otiose, but because steep inflation has caused the cedi-sum amount voted by the government per student under the program to become so insufficient that too many extra-tuition fees have been levied on the parents of the most vulnerable recipients of the CG as to seriously jeopardize school attendance. And so what we really ought to be talking about is the managerial competence, or the woeful lack thereof, on the part of the Mahama/Amissah-Arthur-led government of the National Democratic Congress, and the Mills-Mahama government that immediately preceded the latter. Jejunely skirting around what the real issues are scandalously insults the intelligence of the average Ghanaian citizen. It also blights the image and personality of the Ghanaian citizenry before the global community.

The key operatives of the main opposition New Patriotic Party, particularly its communications directorate, ought to fiercely fight back. There is, of course, an obvious reason for such criminal mendacity on both the part of the Ghana News Agency operatives and the Mahama government. Then also, who has so soon and strangely forgotten the fact that December 2016 is Judgment Time for Messrs. Mahama and Amissah-Arthur and their gravy-train associates and hangers-on at the Flagstaff House Buffet Restaurant?

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

Garden City, New York

August 24, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net