Open Letter To The President

: Let’s Pay National Service Personnel To Think For Ghana

10th April, 2014
The President
Republic of Ghana
Flagstaff House, Accra.

Dear President Mahama,
I was glad when I saw you at parliament the other day in a pair of shoes made by Tonyi Senayah of Horseman Shoes. Mr President, it looked nice on your feet and I must commend Tonyi for his good works. But sir, I trust we can do more.
Sir, I also heard that you’re introducing a GHC 10m facility to support the youth in entrepreneurship called the YES FUND. Yeah, I think it’s a good initiative but you should try as much as possible to avoid the GYEEDA guys. You know best what they can do, but that’s not the reason why I am writing you.
Sir, my friends and I are excited that about graduating from school but we are equally worried about the national service scheme. It’s not that we are scared to be posted to the remote areas of our motherland but we are worried about being sent to the MMDAs, ministries, government departments and agencies in the towns where we will only read newspapers and have our talents under-used.
Sir, over the past few months my friends have been conducting a survey on the utilization of service personnel particularly in the civil service. And the evidence from their studies is worrying, in that, about 76% of the service personnel feel underutilized generally because there are no tasks to perform at their work places. Most of them claim they spend the day reading newspapers, and looking for jobs.
Sir, this worrying development, coupled with your vision to see the youth in entrepreneurship has prompted me to share my juvenile thought on the way forward with you. Sir, you remember Uncle Benjamin Kunbuor once said ‘we spend so much time paying people to talk; we don’t pay people to think in this country.. .’ Yes I think it’s time to let our graduates think and develop solutions to our problems through innovation. Sir, you know our polytechnics and universities produce thousands of brilliant young engineers and science students each year, but sadly, they are drowned by the system or displaced unto the shores of under-productivity and under-utilization.
Sir, I believe the chunk of graduates whose talents will be withered and misused over the national service period could be directed into entrepreneurial thinking. By this, I suggest, entrepreneurship is added to the scheme’s modules. Students would then have the option to register under a career interest, for instance marketing and advertising, textiles and leather works, software and app development etc. After which they would be grouped into workable numbers with like-minded people to develop a viable business solution to some challenges of society under the supervision of a business mentor. Viable plans at the end of the service period should then be offered funding either from government or the mentors to kick start their operations under monitoring. With this we can expect not less than ten start-ups each year, within each region, effectively, fighting graduate unemployment challenging the youth to take hold of the future and mirroring the image of an emerging economy. This is also a major way of maximising the returns to the investment government makes in education. It will also make our graduate as competitive as those of Yale, Cambridge, Harvard and Oxford.
The challenges obviously will be enormous particularly with logistics, monitoring and even mentoring and that’s why the thinking must begin now. Implementing this through the existing NSS structures with the help of other Ministry of Trade and Industry will help minimize the challenges for a smooth take off. Sir, as you and I believe, the graduate of today is well poised to move the economy to a different level but you admit this can only be achieved by channelling our energies into our passions.
Lest I forget sir, I will also suggest that the NSS website is moved unto the government domain to boost its standards. That is, from www.nssghana.org to www.nsss.gov.gh. I hope this letter meets your kindest consideration and hoping to hear from you soon. Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Ahmed Salim Nuhu
(A Concerned Graduate)
(ahmedsalimnuhu@gmail.com)
cc:
The Director, National Service Scheme,
The Head, National Youth Authority,
Minister for Youth and Sports,
Minister for Education,
Minister for Employment and Labour Relations,
Minister for Trade and Industry