The NPP and its Akufo-Addo won’t listen to reason and went ahead to roll out the over-ambitious free Senior High School programme, opening the sluices. All in the name of political expediency because that was the flagship electioneering campaign promise.
No amount of suasion from the Mahama-led administration for them to hasten slowly would wake them up to the reality to go about things “progressively”.
Akufo-Addo energized his team to push that agenda through. Political expediency driving everything. The Minister of Education has even gone beyond reasonable bounds to insult his predecessor for no good reason other than using that rhetoric to shore up the NPP government’s rogue politics.
We have seen images of happenings in the schools and the plight of the students. I hear one of their own even wept openly when he visited some of the schools to see first-hand the horrible circumstances in which the so-called beneficiaries of Akufo-Addo’s “magnanimity” are living in the schools.
Now, something is emerging to confirm earlier apprehensions:
“The Conference of Assisted Senior High Schools, CHASS, is asking government as a matter of urgency to release subsidies which have been in arrears for three terms…
“… As of now, only 20 percent of funds allocated to cater for expenses of schools under the policy have been released, with 80 percent outstanding and no definite payment schedule… (See https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Senior-High-Schools-may-close-due-to-lack-of-funds-CHASS-warns-602449).
MY COMMENTS
When pride takes over everything, one should not be surprised at the mighty fall that results. I can’t understand what exactly is making Akufo-Addo and his team so confident that they can solve the problems facing secondary education in Ghana by insolently sticking to their agenda of free SHS education, regardless of the constraints or the tons of advice for them to not put all their eggs in one basket. (Or to count their eggs before they are hatched).
The Ghanaian economy isn’t strong enough to soak up the pressure. And this free SHS thing is a hefty dose. (Assuming that we accept Akufo-Addo and Dr. Borrowmia’s stentorian but nonsensical claim that the Mahama administration depleted the country’s coffers, where would the money for funding this over-ambitious promise have come from all too soon? Certainly, not from foreign sources, even though borrowing hasn’t lessened. What is happening?)
I am saddened by this dogged and adamant posturing. The challenges facing the secondary schools go beyond what is emerging now as Akufo-Addo’s solution.
Asking for voluntary contributions isn’t a solution either. At most, it makes a huge mockery of Team Akufo-Addo.
Is there any way Akufo-Addo and his NPP government can see things beyond the smokescreen that they have erected behind which to do things for mere political capital? The truth is that this political capital can easily somersault into a terrible electoral curse. The boomerang effect could be disastrous for them. Where have they placed their thinking caps?
I shall return…
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