By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
In a recent interview that he granted Joy News radio, the presidential candidate of the rump-Convention People’s Party (CPP) for Election 2008 pontifically complained that rather than deal constructively with such fundamental issues as high unemployment rate and the poor quality of public education, both the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) were engaged in “useless politics” (See “NDC, NPP Engaging [sic] in Useless Politics – Nduom” MyJoyOnline.com 5/20 11).
Precisely what he meant by “useless politics” or politicking, was not clarified. Still, it would have been quite interesting to have questioned the man who spent six of his most productive years as a politician in the cabinet of the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party government exactly what had motivated him to stay that long in the cabinet of his traditional political rivals and ideological opponents, if, indeed, Dr. Nduom sincerely believes that the New Patriotic Party operatives are about the sordid business of abject political distraction.
To be certain, since parting ways with the New Patriotic Party, barely a year into Election 2008, as the presidential candidate of the rump-Convention People’s Party, most of Dr. Nduom’s bragging rights, as it were, have been squarely predicated on policy initiatives of which he was either the alleged mastermind or with which he was closely associated, of course, with the enabling administrative latitude and conducive political climate guaranteed by then-President John Agyekum-Kufuor.
Intriguingly, as I have amply observed elsewhere, when Election 2008 deadlocked between Messrs. Akufo-Addo and Atta-Mills, with Dr. Nduom’s rump-CPP and several others having been swiftly eliminated in the first round, the former NPP energy minister would cynically and conveniently claim to be neutral with his remarkable political support. In sum, our emphatic contention here is that no well-meaning Ghanaian citizen can take the former CPP-MP for Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Aberem seriously on the question of national development. And even while he may understandably claim to have remarkably contributed towards rationalizing the government employees’ payroll, as the sector minister, and the public employment structure itself, the grim reality of such legacy, as it presently exists, cannot be one by which Dr. Nduom would want to be remembered in perpetuity.
The preceding notwithstanding, his greatest problem as an overly ambitious politician, however, is that Dr. Nduom often falsely presents a public façade of himself as the proverbial lone voice of reason amidst a cacophony of stentorian cynics. On the latter score, of course, nothing could be farther from the truth.
Indeed, had he focused his attention even slightly beyond the protracted internal political wrangling between the clinically megalomaniacal Rawlingses and their lackeys, on the one hand, and Messrs. Atta-Mills and Dramani Mahama, on the other, Dr. Nduom would have, for instance, loudly and clearly heard the confident voice of the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party for Election 2012, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, poignantly detailing the imperative need for Ghana and Ghanaians to swiftly move away from the regressive, niggardly and minimalist approach towards basic education on the part of the ruling National Democratic Congress.
Maybe on the foregoing question also, Paa Kwesi Nduom is apt to claim a position of neutrality, although not very long ago, the American-trained entrepreneur bitterly lamented the abysmally low quality of basic education in Fourth-Republican Ghana, and even called for a reversion to the old British system of GCE “O”- and “A”-levels.
Nana Akufo-Addo, on the other hand, prefers a more progressive system which seeks not only to remarkably enhance the curricular structure and quality of the current pseudo-American system of Junior and Senior high schools but, even more significantly, to progressively upgrade the minimum level of what constitutes a reasonably well-educated pre-tertiary/pre-university Ghanaian citizen (See “Why We Support Nana Addo’s Policy of ‘Teacher First’” Ghanaweb.com 5/18/11).
Under the Mills-led National Democratic Congress, the minimum level of what is considered to be a reasonably/acceptably well-educated pre-university Ghanaian citizen has been regressively pegged at the Junior High School level or 8th grade. This is both ironic (for what it says about the caliber of the advocate) and verges on the unpardonably criminal, particularly coming at a time when the direction of our public and national education ought to be highly technological and cyber- or computer-oriented. What is more, even under the Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party, of whose socialist tenets President Mills claims to be an avid student, the minimum level of pre-university education at which a Ghanaian was deemed to be reasonably well educated was the 10th grade or Standard 7.
In other words, under the National Democratic Congress government of Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills, even as the available body of teachable knowledge has exponentially increased during the course of the last half-century, the average Ghanaian has found him-/herself to be woefully lagging behind other nationalities by at least a whole generation!
It should, naturally, therefore, come as virtually a godsend that Nana Akufo-Addo should be passionately advocating the immediate upgrading of basic education to the same level as recognized here in the United States, which is 12 years of elementary and secondary schooling. This sounds pretty much like the same educational and curricular agenda that Paa Kwesi Nduom has himself been advocating for sometime now. But then, predictably, coming from the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, an ideological rival and sometime political nemesis, this must have sounded like just another shouting match between the Rawlings-Mills camps of the National Democratic Congress. It is this kind of abject hypocrisy that readily disqualifies Dr. Nduom from the presidency and prime-time news coverage.
Anyway, while his is a laudable proposal, nonetheless, an undue emphasis on teacher education and conditions of service at the expense of the equally significant emphasis on the well-equipped and psychologically well-prepared student/pupil, is likely to take us back to square one. We must, however, also highlight the equally significant fact that Nana Akufo-Addo has the well-respected educational policy expert, Prof. Christopher Ameyaw-Akumfi, MP for Techiman-North, as one of his key policy operatives. Needless to say, having creditably served as Director-General of the Ghana Education Service and also as Minister of Education in the Kufuor administration, Prof. Ameyaw-Akumfi is a reputable intellectual who fully and intimately appreciates both the administrative and policy phases of the academic and curricular development in the country.
On the National Democratic Congress side of the equation, unfortunately, the preceding ingredients may be seen to be sorely lacking. I hope I am wrong, although I wouldn’t mind betting my proverbial bottom-dollar.
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and the author, most recently, of “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.
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