Ghana education system must change if we are to avoid a crisis – Nana Addo

Education will be a priority not just on paper but by action if the next government is formed by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), the party’s 2012 presidential candidate Nana Akufo-Addo has said.

Ghana’s hopes of fast-tracking its development and creating opportunities for her people would remain a particularly seductive illusion if the country’s educational system remains moribund and mass failures are recorded yearly, especially at the basic level, he insisted.

“We are not going to be able to make the big leap for development that all of us in this country are seeking if we do not tackle the question of skills and education for the mass of our people; we are not going to be able to develop a modern society if 50 per cent of the adult population is illiterate – you can’t do it,” he told Joy FM’s Super Morning Show host Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah Friday.

Ghana, he warned, stands the risk of falling into the abyss of social and political crises and their concomitant repercussions – as is the case in some African countries – if the education system is not invested in to produce a society of young progressive minded people who have hopes and the opportunity to pursue their dreams. The urgent action is needed here; political leaders cannot continue to pay lip service to the sector, he added.

According to Nana Addo, majority of the country’s youth terminated their education at the Basic Education Certificate Examination – a level he believes cannot equip them with the necessary tools and skills to earn a better standard of living. Under the circumstance, large numbers of young people were joining an already large pool of young unemployed people who are a danger to the nation’s stability, growth and development, he noted. Instead, the termination point should be at least the Senior High School level, he advocated.

To negotiate the far-too-often-cited reason why the education sector is in its current state – limited resources – the NPP flag-bearer said the state must devote a certain percentage of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to education, stressing it was not an impossible thing to do.

“I believe sincerely that if there is a country in this part of the world in so-called black Africa that has the ingredients for making that transition from poverty to prosperity, it is Ghana, especially now that we have a democratic system of government that seems to have the allegiance and the attachment of the mass of our people, I think we have the constitutional and political framework to address the questions of development,” Nana Addo said with a caveat, “but this matter of education and promoting skills and thereby jobs…must be the central feature [of every government].”

Society of opportunities

Library: Nana Addo during his tour to the Upper East Region

Speaking to his mantra of creating a new society of opportunities when elected president, the NPP flag-bearer said all developed economies of the world hinged their development on creating opportunities for the citizens to flourish.

The economic status of parents should determine the educational opportunities available to children, he said, stressing children’s growth cannot be stunted, their development must not be constricted and their confidence diminished simply because they come from poor families.

There must be, he stated, “a situation whereby people born rich [or] born poor have [equal] access to education, and when they come out of school, they have the skills to be able to locate themselves in the world of work.”

Giving the most eloquent explanation yet of his controversial ‘all die be die’ cry, the former Attorney-General said criticisms of the comments and claims that they were war cries, are not only misplaced but mischievous.

He said his public conduct throughout his political career does not support the claims that he is a warmonger determined to instigate his party supporters to resort to violence in the 2012 elections.

According to him, the statement was necessitated by the paralysis suffered by the security agencies, especially the police, in the face of persistent brutal attacks on NPP supporters by NDC loyalists.

According to him, supporters of the ruling party had at a number of by-elections perpetrated violence against their opponents, some had physically and verbally attacked DCEs and even burnt tender documents and yet the police did nothing.

Nana Addo said in the face of such growing culture of impunity where the ruling party’s supporters are law unto themselves, it was reasonable to expect that elections 2012 will not be different and only appropriate for him to admonish his party supporters to be resolute and stand firm and defend themselves.

“What it meant is that we are not going to just lie down and be rolled over; we are not and I’ve said it time and again and the record is there, we are not going to go out looking for any quarrel, we are not going to go out and [perpetrate] any violence, what we are saying is that, we are not going to sit down and allow ourselves to be beaten [up]” he assured.

Nana Addo said the president and his security advisers must assure the Ghanaian people that the 2012 elections would be peaceful, free and fair and that nobody would intimidate another.

Touching on the Saturday’s primaries, he appealed to delegates and aspirants to conduct themselves as the NPP has always done and set the example that the party is noted for.

It is important, he stressed, for the party to, through its primaries demonstrate to the Ghanaian people that “we are ready and united and coherent for the task ahead.”

Story by Malik Abass Daabu/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana