Is President Mills heading for doom?

By: Samuel K. Obour

Forty-five years after his overthrow, kwame Nkrumah’s name continues to resonate

within and without the country.

In December 1999, listeners of the BBC voted Nkrumah ‘Africa’s Man of the

Millenium’. This was not because he was a magician, but because his legacy

continues to benefit millions of Africans home and abroad.

The current president of the Republic of Ghana, Prof. J.E.A. Mills, has begun

his third year as President, and it will be interesting to know the sort of

legacy he’d leave behind when he eventually leaves office.

Though some achivements have been made during the over two years he has been in

office, President Mills is doomed to a vague and uncertain legacy if he doesn’t

do more to address the basic concerns of majority of Ghanaians.

An enduring legacy

The good news for the President is that he still has time to build a lasting

legacy for himself. An imperishable legacy. Today, the name and works of Nkrumah

survive, despite attempts by the National Liberation Council (NLC) to dishonour

his legacy in the aftermath of the 1966 coup.

Nkrumah’s inspiring effect on the black man, his singular contributions to the

liberation of Ghana and the African continent and his unsurpassed achievements

as President of Ghana continue to impact the life of many an African today.

Ghanaians, especially, continue to benefit immensely from Nkrumah’s aggressive

development of infrastructure and his improvement of education.

In the opinion of this writer, President Mills, like Nkrumah, can build an

indestructible legacy for himself, by undertaking development projects that will

positively impact the lives of majority of Ghanaians.

A curious look at the country will reveal that there are only a few things more

important to Ghanaians than than access to quality education and good health

care. And in a country where literacy stands at about 59.5 %, and people

continue to die in childbirth and from diseases such as malaria and cholera,

President Mills has an inescapable responsibility to ensure that Ghanaians have

access to quality education and healthcare.

Education, especially, deserves special and urgent attention.

Poor educational system

Many years ago, Ghana’s education system was regarded the best in West-Africa.

Kwame Nkrumah as president, had augmented the educational structures put in

place by the British, by building several schools across the country, including

tertiary institutions such as GIJ, UCC and KNUST.

Prominent intellectuals such as the President Mills himself, Busumuru Kofi

Annan, Prof. Frimpong Boateng, Mrs. Bamford Addo, Justice Georgina Woods, Mr.

Emile Short, Mr Ransford Tetteh, Mr. Amissah-Arthur and Dr. Joyce Aryee are some

beneficiaries of that educational system.

These are individuals of impeccable intellectual repute: Busumuru Kofi Annan

remains the first and only West-African to have become the United Nations

Secretary General. Emile Short also, has returned after serving as judge with

the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha,

Tanzania. Professor Frimpong Boateng until recently had been Ghana’s only heart

surgeon. Needless to talk about President Mills’ achievements.Ghana has,

however, had a phenomenal decline in respect of educational standards. Our

educational institutions continue to produce sub-standard scholars, due to

several factors including the lack of basic imperatives for quality education

such as competent and motivated teachers, infrastructure, equipment and

facilities such as classrooms, textbooks and computers.

Public basic schools worst affected

Public basic schools, more so those in deprived areas of the country, are the

worst affected. We continue to hear news of basic schools in this country

scoring 0% in the BECE every year. These children fail not always because they

lack educational facilities or aren’t intelligent but sometimes because they

are being taught by unmotivated and in some cases, lazy teachers who don’t give

their all.

In the words of William Ward, ” the mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher

explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher

inspires.” Unfortunately,what we have in our public basic schools are mostly

mediocre teachers who do not do not give their all. As a result, many students

in basic public schools, more so those in deprived areas of the country, fail to

make it past J.H.S level.

In 2010, for instance, several basic public schools in the country scored zero

percent in the Basic Education Certificate Exams (BECE).

According to the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, ”ten Junior High Schools (JHS)

in the Agona West Municipality and Agona East District of the Central Region had

none of their students obtaining between aggregate six and 36 to gain admission

into Senior High Schools.” Zero per cent effectively!

In Twifo-Heman-Lower Denkyira District, ”fourteen schools recorded zero

percent.”

In Hohoe, ”fifteen basic schools scored zero percent.”

In the ”Jomoro District Five schools scored zero percent.” The list of schools

that recorded zeros goes on and on, rather shamefully.

The zeros recorded by the above schools and several others in the country

effectively denied several hundreds of students the opportunity to gain

admission into secondary schools.

Dashed hopes, shattered dreams

Fundamentally, thousands of children who would have become doctors, engineers,

accountants lawyers, journalists and so on, are forced to either learn trades or

resort to menial jobs to make a living. The rich in society have no problem in

this regard. They continue to enroll their wards in private basic schools where

the quality of education is superior, by miles, to what exists in public basic

schools. The poor, on the other hand, lack the economic capability to enroll

their children in private schools. They have no choice, therefore, to continue

to enroll their children in public basic schools where education is virtually

dead and children are being turned into illiterates.

Essentially, children from rich backgrounds go ahead to obtain good education

which propels them to great heights. While many children from poor homes have to

make do with public basic education which invariably lands them in not very good

places. Some of them become frustrated and they go ahead to smoke ‘wee’ and

engage in immoral and illegal activities such as prostitution and robbery.

To state that public basic education in this country is dead, is stating the

obvious- and President Mills will be building an indestructible legacy for

himself if he aggressively takes steps to resurrect it.

President Mills’ responsibility

If the professor can transform public basic education in the country by making

public basic schools as good as private basic schools, many children who would

have been lost in the ‘forest of illiteracy and uncertainty’, would remember him

as the President whose intervention made it possible for them to acquire quality

education.

He would be remembered, even decades after he has left the Presidency, as the

man who revolutionised public basic education in this country.

John Kennedy admonishes us to ” think of education as the means of developing

our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream

which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater

strength for our nation.”

The President Mills, therefore, has a responsibility to make quality

education accessible to every citizen of this country and not just

a privileged few.

Truth be told, President Mills’ government has made attempts at improving

education in the country: From the distribution of hundreds of thousands of

school uniform and the building of hundreds of class room blocks across the

country to the recent cutting of sods for the construction of two new

universities in the Volta and Brong Ahafo Regions of the country, something is

being done to improve education.

We must acknowledge, however, that first, special attention is not being paid to

public basic education which requires urgent and decisive action. Second,

building classrooms and giving out free school uniforms alone is not enough to

improve basic public education in this country.

The development of educational infrastructure as well as the provision of free

books, uniforms and food, must go hand in hand with a drastic improvement in the

quality of teaching in our basic schools. If not, efforts at improving public

basic education in the country will be futile.

Incompetent and uncommitted teachers must be sacked and replaced with competent

and dedicated ones. A drastic improvement in conditions of service of teachers

is also crucial to improving basic public education in the country. Teachers are

literally crying about poor conditions of service and it’s high time government

paid attention to them.

Conclusion

This writer acknowledges that billions, not millions of dollars, is required to

positively transform Ghana’s education, more so at the public basic level. It’s

important however, that President Mills makes every effort to secure whatever

amount would be required for that purpose.

If Ghana could collaterise oil to the tune of ten billion dollars for loans in

building houses, we must be willing to do more to secure the needed funding for

the improvement of education in this country, because according to Solomon

Ortiz, ”education makes children less dependent upon others and opens doors to

better jobs and career possibilities”.

The benefits of an improved educational system are immeasurable.

The economic success of countries such as South Korea and Singapore, where

literacy stands at 97.9% and 92.5%, respectively, is enough indication that

countries thrive where they invest in their people.

A good educational sector will produce intelligent individuals who will not only

improve the country’s workforce but also take advantage of existing

opportunities, especially in contemporary science and technology, to drive

forward the country’s economic growth. If Ghana succeeds in attaining 90 per

cent literacy within 20 years, the problems of unemployment and poverty will be

greatly reduced, especially when the country has a vibrant private sector that

is in dire need of capable human resource.

There have been many Head of States in this country but not all of them are

remembered for good reasons. In the words of Donald H. McGannon, ”leadership is

action, not position” and President Mills has the opportunity to write his own

legacy by undertaking projects that will benefit the majority of Ghanaians

rather than a few privileged individuals. The improvement of basic public

education in the country is a good way to start.

Samuelkwason@yahoo.com

samuelobour.wordpresss.com

You can follow me on twitter @samuelobour