John Dramani Mahama
The process of development – human development – in the form of Free SHS, should at least create an environment for people, individually and collectively to develop to their full potential and to have a reasonable chance of leading productive and creative lives.
Of course, like any other policy, the Free SHS has its own challenges. However, on the preponderance of probability, the positives outweigh the negatives within the Free SHS implementation.
Then again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the Free SHS critics expressing their pessimism. After all, they are within their democratic right to nag, shrill, and criticise as they see fit.
Isn’t freedom of opinion and expression part and parcel of democracy? I am afraid, it is.
We should, however, not lose sight of the fact that by implementing the Free SHS, the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration is graciously working towards the reduction of the canker of poverty in Ghana.
My dear reader, education, as a matter of fact, drives the development of a nation. And therefore the logical approach to improving accessibility and quality is not through political rhetoric and unfulfilled promises, but through well-thought-through policies such as the Free SHS.
Considering the enormous benefits therein education, it was, indeed, prudent and somewhat forward-thinking for the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration to seek to bridge the ever-widening social inequalities chasm through rational distribution of national resources in the form of Free SHS.
Besides, the fact that the erstwhile Mahama administration needlessly left behind a huge debt stock amid harsh socio-economic standards of living, it was, indeed, commendable for the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration to afford to implement the seemingly admirable, albeit costly social intervention such as Free SHS.
If we stroll down memory lane, one unique campaign message that dominated the 2008, 2012 and 2016 general elections was the poverty alleviation Free SHS.
While candidate Akufo-Addo and his NPP were promising to implement Free SHS if voted into power, candidate Mahama and his NDC were all over the place campaigning vigorously against the policy.
Regrettably, however, Ghanaians mistakenly bought into NDC’s ‘sugar-coated message’ in two consecutive elections (2008 and 2012) and turned down the seemingly advantageous Free SHS offer.
But lo and behold, on 7th December 2016, the good people of Ghana saw the light and gave the Free SHS ‘promiser’ (Akufo-Addo) a massive endorsement.
To his credit though, within a year into his four-year mandate, President Akufo-Addo estimably implemented the Free SHS to the delight of Ghanaian parents and their children.
Sadly, however, no less a person than Ex-President Mahama conveniently and persistently criticised Akufo-Addo for implementing the Free SHS policy, allegedly, at the expense of other developmental projects (see: ‘Free SHS crippling other sectors-Mahama, classfmonline.com/ghanaweb.com, 24/02/2018).
Sometimes, one cannot help but convivially applaud some of our politicians for their incredible adroitness in the systematic propagation of propaganda intended to either hoodwink or proselytise unsuspecting Ghanaians into accepting their parochial agenda.
Former President Mahama was quoted to have lamented during one of the NDC’s unity health walks: “The problem this government is facing and it is in their own interest, is that, Free Senior High School is absorbing all the fiscal space they have and so almost every money you have, you are having to put it into Free Senior High School. So you can’t pay District Assemblies Common Fund, you can’t pay NHIS (National Health Insurance Scheme), you can’t pay GET Fund (Ghana Education Trust Fund), you can’t pay other salaries and things because all your money is going into Free Senior High School.”
If you may recall, during the 2016 electioneering campaign, former President Mahama was captured on tape emitting vehemently: “Hey! That Ghana must not introduce Free SHS on a whimsical promise of a desperate politician”. “Many mistakes have been made by countries in Africa already with Free SHS.”
Again, in 2020, he lamented: “The government has budgeted 2 billion cedis for Free SHS for this academic year”. “If you have 2 billion more to spend on education, would you spend all of it on Free SHS, so that even when people can afford to pay, they don’t have to pay?”
Gratifyingly, however, the introduction of the Free SHS has paved way for more than three million children including those whose parents were in penury and would not have had the opportunity to enter senior high school.
Given the circumstances, observers can draw the inference from the preceding criticisms that Mahama does not fancy the Free SHS, and therefore he is not ready to spend huge amount of money to run the policy.
The poverty alleviation-free SHS policy, in fact, reinforces the United Nations vision on human development and the right to development.
Development is indeed shifting from the conventional approach to the human rights approach, whereby the focus is on equity and social justice (Mansell and Scot 1994).
It was against that background that the international community agreed to work synergistically to assist the underdeveloped nations in line with the provisions of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development.
So far there have been concerted efforts by the international community to fortify the Right to Development by first implementing the eight Millennium Development Goals with a view to developing a global partnership for development (Alston 2005).
The MDGS came to an end at the end of 2015 and replaced with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Under the Sustainable Development Goals, every country would be obliged to meet the targets set therein (UN 2015).
As the international community seeks to implement and monitor the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals agenda, the human development approach remains useful to articulating the objectives of development and improving people’s well-being by ensuring an equitable, sustainable and stable world.
In essence, human development – or the human development approach- is about expanding the richness of human life. It is an approach that is focused on people and their opportunities and choices.
Human development, in reality, focuses on improving the lives of people rather than assuming that economic growth will lead, automatically, to greater wellbeing for all.
In other words, human development is about giving people more freedom to live lives they value. This implies developing people’s abilities and giving them a chance to improve upon their lives.
Human development is about more choices. It is about providing people with opportunities in the form of Free SHS, for instance.
The human development approach, developed by the economist Mahbub Ul Haq, is encapsulated in the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s work on human capabilities, often framed in terms of whether people are able to “be” and “do” desirable things in life.
Examples include-Beings: well fed, sheltered, healthy; Doings: work, education, voting, participating in community life (HDR 2015).
Since 1990, more than 2 billion people have been lifted out of low human development, extreme income poverty has been reduced by more than a billion. Every region of the world has seen Human Development Index gains (HDR).
Some of us, as a matter of principle, will continue to sing the praises of Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration for graciously bequeathing the Free SHS to the generations yet unborn.
K. Badu, UK.
k.badu2011@gmail.com
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