When I heard in the news that Dr Tony Aidoo, National Democratic Congress (NDC) stalwart and ‘Headmaster’ at the Office of the President, Osu was named as one of the Council Members of the University of Ghana, I heaved a huge sigh of relief – I said to myself, sanity is coming at long last.
However, my huge expectation that things were going to turn around at the nation’s premier university was short-lived as the news turned out to be a hoax – an Accra-based daily newspaper carried Dr Tony’s Aidoo’s alleged nomination to the Legon Council. That newspaper has earned the unenviable record of being the most recklessly sensational tabloid in Ghana.
Indeed, I was seriously heartbroken over the weekend when Dr Aidoo himself stated on a current affairs programme that ‘it was the Daily Guide which appointed and disappointed me’. When I heard the eloquent Dr Aidoo drop that phrase, I just said, all hope is lost.
This frustration is without prejudice to the competence of the other members of the reconstituted Council of the University. I would wish all those academics appointed to the Council to deliver to merit the confidence reposed in them by their principal!
My thinking was that somebody who really calls a spade by its original name and would demand justice and fairness for the students and faculty at the University would finally find his way to the Council. I was dead sure that he was going to demand accountability at every level – he would surely demand excellence and would not ‘give anything to God’ in the typical Ghanaian ostrich fashion.
While I was dreaming ‘all’ that dream, I never realised that I had also been taken in by the pranks of the mother of all reckless newspapers!
Well, Dr Aidoo is not on the Council and from the slow pace of governance I’ve seen for the past (almost) seven months, Dr Aidoo might just not even make it to that Council even if President Mills is to get a second shot at the black stool!
However, Dr Aidoo’s job as Head of Monitoring and Evaluation of all government appointees should (I believe) include his supervision of Council Members of the University of Ghana and by extension, the Vice-Chancellor who is in the employment of the taxpayers of this country.
I have queried many student leaders as to why they would not ask authorities at Ghana’s traditional universities to publish the accounts for academic and residential facilities user fees – at least a ten-year account would not be bad at all. Furthermore, the student leaders should be asking the authorities to what tangible use those monies have been put since the introduction of the cost-sharing concept.
Today (July 20, 2009), I had to check a few things at the University of Ghana so I drove through the horrendous traffic and finally got to Legon around 11.30 GMT. I had not used that road for a while so I realised that the footbridge had been pulled down to make way for the road expansion going on there.
I however noticed that there was a huge crater (call it pothole and you would be wrong this time) at the main entrance to the University. I thought the recent rains should have been the cause. Therefore, I decided to make some enquiry around and I was so shocked to realise that the huge potholes had been there before the rains and I was not the first disappointed road user and somebody even told me ‘chief you are not going to be the first and last to use this part of the road’.
The last person was spot on because I can bet my last pesewa that even the Vice Chancellor uses that portion – which is even so ‘very’ close to the Alumni Office! The catch here is that the Vice Chancellor (VC) probably uses a custom-built SUV paid for by the taxpayer. Government might however not have provided any money from the consolidated fund for the VC and his empire of administrators to use for patching up that small portion of the Legon road!
My dear reader, I hope you are not going to be taken in by some lame excuse that the ‘gutter’ in the middle of the Legon road is all part of the Legon to Adenta road expansion project!
Sometimes I have asked whether the calibre of academics that are made VCs at the Universities of Ghana have any right accepting those positions at all. The fact that you are an excellent biochemist does not qualify you as an astute administrator. The fact that you are a medical doctor who has helped broken new frontiers in the development of medicine in Ghana does not make you a good administrator.
Further (the most important point that qualifies you for a VC’s job in Ghana) the fact that you are the most experienced member of faculty and an alumnus of the university would not make you a good administrator!
Of course, people need to be rewarded for their dedication to the cause of our universities but in case you are going to be appointed an administrator of a university that trains tens of thousands of young minds, you should be cut out for the job – a cognate training exposure should be the prerequisite!
If we had started appointing qualified administrators as VCs, our universities would not have deteriorated to their present levels. The business as usual theory is simply unacceptable. The other day, some friends of mine had some business meeting with some academics from Legon and other Ghanaian universities. My friends were told that the university statutes did not allow them to get on the capital markets to source funds for research and other developments.
Even if there is an archaic statute like that, I believe the universities are located in constituencies, which have sitting members of parliament (MPs) – they should get their MPs to push for an amendment of such an antiquated statute.
Let’s get back on track – I passed the crater and got to Legon. While in the meeting at Legon, my colleagues were discussing how expensive education in Legon had become. I developed interest immediately. They passed a page’s document around and I was shocked at a few things I read on the page.
It was the admission letter of a student to a higher degree programme – the fee for the two-year programme is approximately US$7,000 (seven thousand dollars). This is not my beef – I believe students at that level should be able to pay commensurate fees for marketable degree programmes.
For emphasis, I would quote item ten on the admission letter which was signed by a vice-dean, Professor K. Ofori, “You are required to pay, a Hall attachment fee of GH¢27.00 into the Graduate Hostels Account Number 1031130009512 at any branch of Ghana Commercial Bank.”
This is where the fraud is! In the preceding paragraph of Prof Ofori’s letter, was the preamble that the offer of admission is in no way linked to on-campus accommodation. So, you are offered admission at the university and you are not given campus lodging – but somebody thinks you should pay GH¢27.00 into a special account!
I reckon that from this dodgy move alone, some personalities are going to make at least US$100,000 this academic year – this is premised on the background that 3000 plus graduate students would enrol at Legon this year.
I remember very well how I took on some faculty at the same Legon some year back for billing graduate students (each) GH¢30.00 for a course titled, ‘Introduction to Computers’.
At that time, I described that element on the admission letter as a fraud. At the end of the semester, I was just proved right – all the students paid up but there was no lesson on ‘Introduction to Computers’!
The Legon authorities always sing with the most high-falutin tone that government has not given them enough money. However, what is the use of the Business School if you cannot use it to generate enough money to run the University?
Should your refusal to crack your brain mean a continuous fleecing of the Ghanaian student?
There is a very popular model at the Hull University’s Business School in the UK and I recommend this for the Tagoe-led administration at the University of Ghana.
Since the students have refused to take you on for reasons that would endear them to the hearts of the ordinary Ghanaian, I hope your reading of the model I proposed above would help you begin to do something very different.
Kwame Nkrumah was a Ghanaian. He thought outside the box and do I believe Prof Tagoe and his colleagues can do something similar. You may however choose to ignore my advice and behave like a typical Ghanaian university Professor who knows it all.
That way you might just equal the naked emperor in your achievements and may well go down in history as the VC who also contributed your might to collapsing our alma mater. But hey, whichever way, this is Ghana Where Everything is Basaa!
Source: Kojo Owusu-Mbire Email: owusumbire@gmail.com
