“You benefited from free education and have become the President of Ghana. When the time has come for someone else to benefit from the same project, you are telling Ghanaians that there is no money to execute free SHS. The money is there, the money is there, the money is there” – Candidate Nana Akufo Addo.
When I read in the dailies that the government of the NPP has released GH¢35.9 million (350,000,000,000.00 old Ghana Cedis ) for the second term free SHS, I was shocked. Where did they get the money? So the money is there as Nana said during the electioneering campaign but the NDC decided to share the money among themselves in a create, loot and share manner? No wonder Nana said recently that governance is about choices. You see, there is one thing stronger than all the armies of the world and that is an idea whose time has come. The idea of free SHS was mooted in the run-up to the 2012 general election by Nana and his team but sadly Ghanaians were misled into thinking that the idea was not feasible. The time of that lofty idea has come and has come to stay. Which future government will dare cancel free SHS?
When the free SHS was introduced in September this year and the doomsday prophets went about peddling lies that the project could not survive because the Akufo Addo-led administration could not tell Ghanaians where they were going to get money to execute the project, I laughed. The Akans have an adage which says when a cripple tells you that he will hit you with a stone, do not take things for granted because he may be sitting on one. And anyway, which army general will reveal his war tactics and plans to his enemy? Immediately the free SHS was rolled out, these same naysayers and nation wreckers went to town, shouting from the rooftop that children have no place to sleep and that there were no dual desks for the students. I had cause to write in those days that every new programme will surely have some teething problems to deal with but with time things will become normal. I am sure the Minister of Education is capable of solving all those teething problems because he cannot fail the president as far as the free SHS is concerned.
Then they doubted how the government will be able to feed the teeming day students as promised by Nana Addo. They did not know that the president and his team had under their sleeves the magic wand to solve the problem. The free SHS started alongside the free hot meal promised by the president. Unknown to these people who do not think ahead, caterers had been hired to supply all SHS day students free hot meal a day. Schools have reopened for the second term and the children are still ‘filling’ their stomachs with one hot meal a day. Today you do not hear any NDC communicator criticizing the free SHS because people become extremely angry anytime they hear them making ugly noises about the programme. If you are living in Accra, Kumasi, Takoradi and the other big cities where people have their children in private schools, you will not realize the impact of the free SHS and free hot meal a day. You may think everything is lofty elsewhere. Come to my holy village and see how parents are praising Nana Addo and his government for being bold enough to introduce this programme. Indeed, come to my holy village and see how people are cursing Mr. Mahama and the NDC for denying their wards free SHS for four years when they stole the verdict of the people in 2012.
Since independence, no Head of State has ever held the bull by the horns as far as free secondary school is concerned apart from Oseadeyo Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo. The late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah looked up north and saw that because of abstract poverty, the people in the then two northern regions could not take their children to school so he introduced free education. For the six years that the man ruled Ghana only the two regions enjoyed free education. Subsequent governments maintained the status quo until Nana Addo came storming in with his idea of free SHS. When Dr. Nkrumah introduced free education in the two Northen regions he too had problems initially.
Parents felt reluctant to take their wards to school and teachers who were recruited from the southern part of the country to go up there in the north to teach also hesitated to go there because of the rate of poverty and lack of good accommodation. Imagine a teacher who has spent all his youthful days in Accra being posted to Bimbila or Salaga to teach. To lure teachers from the south to the north to teach, Dr. Nkrumah started building teachers’ bungalows which attracted teachers to go there. He went ahead to introduce free lunch for the teachers and students. At a point in time, teachers from the south who went to teach in the north did not regret at all because their children had the best education and could speak perfect English since vernacular was prohibited because the teachers themselves did not understand the language of the people and as such spoke only English language with the students.
The first president of Ghana who benefited from free education was Dr. Hilla Limann. Then Alhaji Aliu followed as the first Vice President to come from the north who also benefited from the free education. Then Mr. John Mahama also became a Vice President and President of Ghana. He too benefited from free education. Majority of our current and former ministers from the north benefited from free education not to talk of parliamentarians and military and police officers, Prison and Immigration Officers and a cross section of northerners who also benefited from the programme. Go to the university campuses and ask. Many professors, lecturers and non teaching staff from the three northern regions were beneficiaries of free education.
The above quotation of Nana Addo was very perfect because even though Mr. Mahama’s father was a minister under the Nkrumah regime and domiciled in Accra, he sent the boy back home to enjoy free secondary school. I am very passionate about the free SHS because some of us went through hell on earth to get a secondary school education. If you were born into a poor family like me and you got admission into any secondary school in Ghana in those days, you will realize the pain our parents would go through before taking you to school. Some parents had to sell some of their properties before they could enroll their wards in secondary schools. Some of us who came from poor families and got admission in the big cities had to always look for vacation employment in other to be able to buy a few provisions when schools reopened.
There was this company called GB Olivant and they used to employ students on vacation to weed their yard. During one of the long vacations, my friend and I decided to go there to seek vacation employment and the guy in charge told us that they had employed enough students so he will not be able to employ us. As we were walking home, my friend started weeping and when I asked him why he was weeping he had this to say: “So common weeding self, we can’t get? Oh poverty is painful.” Today, anytime we meet, we remember this incidence and laugh over it. A new government has come with the fine idea of free SHS. It implies that monies which should have been used to pay huge school fees can be used to buy provisions, buy clothes, invest in farming and feed the children.
You know what? True cigar aficionados know that there is a huge difference between handmade, hand-rolled cigars and cigars that were made via a machine. The taste is different, the feel is different and the draw is different. So here I go puffing a stick of Finck Cigar, a hand-rolled cigar made in the Dominican Republic which is popular among celebrities !!!
Eric Bawah