Funding Of Free-SHS Education…

Says “I Don’t Know The Total Cost”

News Desk Report

It has never been in doubt that, in the unlikely event that Mr. Akufo-Addo is voted as president, he will plunge Ghana into a state of uncertainty and pedagogic quagmire, as far as his ‘Free-Senior-High-School Education-in-Ghana campaign is concerned.

The Akans have a proverb “Agrobes?’a Efie Anopa”, to wit; one can tell a good day by early morning; and that even as a presidential candidate wanting a political power, Akufo-Addo has no shame in spewing wrongly calculated figures.
Whiles the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) flagbearer, Mr. Williams Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo stated at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) presidential forum last Tuesday 21st August, 2012 that, his much-espoused free-SHS-education was estimated to cost Gh¢78million annually, his Director of Communications, Nana Akomea, has, by his answer of not knowing the total cost exposed Akufo-Addo very badly.
Exhibiting real political courage and not wanting to be dragged along by Akufo -Addo’s lies, the NPP’s Director of Communications spoke the gospel truth on Joy FM’s current affairs programme, Newsfile on Saturday.
This display of courage was manifested, when Nana Akomea disclosed that he does not know the total cost of his boss’s much-trumpeted free SHS education.
Nana Akomea, a true Christian who does not want to bear the cross of his flagbearer, thus, exposed him.
“I don’t know the total cost”, the NPP’s Director Communications has said in an answer to a question asked him by a panelist on the programme, who was probing to know the total cost of his party’s free SHS policy, having identified some mathematically flaws in Akufo-Addo’s calculation that brought him to the Gh¢78million he intends spending annually on senoir secondary school pupils.
Meanwhile, a member of the NPP campaign team (name withheld) has hinted The Informer that, Akufo-Addo was in a rush to impress, and that, a little research could have saved the party from the huge embarrassment, suffered as a result of the aftermath of the flagbearer’s mathematical goof at the IEA presidential forum.
However, available statistics from the Ghana Education Service (GES) has it that, Government spends GH¢432,000,000 annually, on the current SHS student population of 720,000 in the country, with GH¢600 expended on each.
The Gh¢432,000,000, the statistics say, is exclusive of tuition; so one wonders how candidate Mr. Williams Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his NPP managed to arrive at that figure of Gh¢78million as the amount of money to be exhausted annually to take care of its much-hyped free SHS, when they are ignorant of the population of SHS pupils currently in the country.