Otumfuo-Osei-Tutu-II
A great grand-daughter of Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene, Vanessa Awurama Mensah, has picked an LLB Second Class Upper degree from the Ghana Campus of one of the leading British universities, Lancaster University recently.
She was one of the over a hundred students to pick degrees in an assortment of disciplines during the glamorous function which took place at the Movenpick Hotel in Accra. The programme attracted important personalities; one of them the British High Commissioner to Ghana, Iain Walker.
The British envoy charged the freshly minted graduates to consider their success as a building block for their future during a speech he delivered at the ceremony.
Their graduation, he charged them, should serve as a passport to greater opportunities and not an end to a road.
Continuing, he told them not to relish their success inordinately but to be humble in all their undertakings adding that they should invest in networking because of the inherent advantages in doing so – which he attested to.
Co-Chairman and Co-Founder of the Transnational Educational Group, which played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Ghana Campus of the Lancaster University, Zafar Siddiqi expressed delight in what the tertiary institution has achieved so far.
The decision to embark on the establishment of tertiary institutions abroad, he said, was informed by the inability of the current number of such institutions to satisfy the needs of the African continent.
The Chancellor of the University, the Rt Hon Alan Milburn in his remarks, congratulated the graduands and pointed out that Lancaster University now operates in 24 countries across the world.
Lancaster University, he noted, builds bridges and not walls and pointed at the long-term relationships the school engenders through the graduates it churns out.
The British University, he went on, provides opportunities for students regardless of their backgrounds. What they studied, he reminded them, would remain part of their future adding that ‘if it is easy, it is now worth doing. It is the hard things which need to be done.’
An interesting attraction at the function was the honour done an alumnus of the school, Oheneba Lovelace Prempeh who completed his degree programme at the Lancaster University in 1968. He is the first Ghanaian to complete his education at Lancaster University and was the son of Otumfuo Sir Osei Agyeman Prempeh II, who reigned between 1931 and 1970.
Now a chief, the chartered accountant has worked in several prestigious organizations since his graduation many years ago.
By A.R. Gomda