Accessible But Unfree Public Education?

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

In April this year, while he was Vice-President and Arch-Presidential Lieutenant to the now-late President John Evans Atta-Mills, Mr. John Dramani Mahama had the golden opportunity to add his voice to the resonant voices of distinguished Ghanaian statesmen and women who have publicly backed Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s campaign policy agenda of guaranteeing every Ghanaian child a tuition-free basic education from Kindergarten to the Senior High School level. Unfortunately, as has become characteristic of the increasingly elitist and hypocritical key operatives of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Mahama flatly refused to stand up and be counted (See “Senior High School Should Be Accessible, Not Free” Spyghana.com 4/11/12).

Instead, the man whose politician father privileged him with a first-class Achimota education chose to cynically and disingenuously quibble over the supposed agenda of the NDC of securing more funds in “order to expand access [to secondary education] so that the more than 50 percent of children who complete basic schools, and who are qualified to do [sic] a secondary education but cannot find the space would be able to find that space.” And on the latter score, of course, ought to be promptly pointed out that the now-President John Dramani Mahama made the preceding observation during the second launching of the NDC’s so-called Better Ghana Agenda.

Needless to say, the Gaddhafi-inspired “Green Book” policy agenda of the National Democratic Congress has been a massive failure on the following salient fronts of “Governance, Economy, People and Infrastructure.” On the “people” or human development front, Ghanaians have witnessed massive and unprecedented levels of unemployment in our 55 years of postcolonial governance. Likewise, on the administrative, or governance, front, Ghanaians have experienced the largest and most bizarre economic heist – or broad daylight robbery – and naked exploitation in the form of such running and raging scandals as the Woyome Super-Grand Larceny and the Judgment-Debt Gravy Train, in which key operatives and cardinal cabinet members of the ruling National Democratic Congress continue to orgiastically wallow and feast at the criminal expense of the proverbial average Ghanaian. The national economy, courtesy of Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur and Dr. Kwabena Dufuor, also continues its precipitous downward spiral. And in terms of infrastructure development at all levels of human endeavor – i.e. health, education and agriculture – Ghanaians continue to seriously lag when the latter is compared to the generous magnitude of our collective national wealth.

And so, really, what policy agenda could be more positively geared towards a comprehensive overhaul of Fourth-Republican Ghana than a non-discriminatory fee-free access to public education from Kindergarten through the Senior High School or Twelfth Grade? On the latter score, President Mahama flagrantly prefers to envisage matters through the privileged lens of his own individual upbringing in the care of a multi-millionaire father, relatively speaking, who fathered 19 children by more than a handful of mothers and yet, in the undoubtedly proud words of the now-President Mahama, was able to adequately cater to the needs of each and every one of these children.

Intriguingly, though, the former Rawlings communication minister does not tell his audience how adequately the elder Mr. Mahama took care of his several concubines and mistresses.

The fact of the matter is that the over 50-percent of schoolchildren for whose sake President Mahama would rather build more secondary schools than offer tuition-free access, cannot gain access presently precisely because of their double-plight of being from financially strapped families as well as not being politically connected to the movers and shakers of our public educational system. In essence, expanding basic educational facilities without also making the latter tuition- or fee-free is tantamount to the sadistic art of bait-and-switch; or even better yet, the classical myth of Tantalus. And it is squarely on the preceding observations that President Mahama ought to be given a salutary heave-ho, come December 7, 2012.

You see, what is also remarkable about the political and ideological cynicism of Mr. Mahama, is equally what is facilely predictable about the former Bole-Bamboi National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament. And that predictable phenomenon, in Darwinian parlance, of course, is called CASH-AND-CARRY POLITICS or better yet, YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN, BUDDY!

*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 Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###