Former President John Dramani Mahama’s campaign team says Prof Kwesi Yankah would have known the former President wasn’t referring to him when addressing party members in the Cape Coast North constituency last week if he had done due diligence.

According to the team, the former President was rather referring to Prof Victor Yankah of the Department of Theatre and Film Studies of the University of Cape Coast when he said a new NDC government would invite Prof. Yankah, among others, to a stakeholders conference on the Free SHS policy.

Reacting to the former President’s statement, a statement from the Ministry of Education said the Minister of State in charge of tertiary education was very much involved in the planning of the Free SHS policy under the Akufo-Addo government and therefore not interested in any future engagement with Mahama.

“Professor Yankah would therefore not be interested in being part of any process that seeks to compromise the gains achieved by the Free SHS policy. He, therefore, wishes to advise Mr. Mahama to desist from drawing him into his campaign on education,” the statement read.

But the former President’s campaign team says the Minister could have saved himself from the “needless and self-inflicted public embarrassment”.

A statement signed by the team’s spokesperson, James Agyenim Boateng stated that “We, therefore, find it baffling that Prof Kwesi Yankah of the Ministry of Education has inserted himself into the statement of Mr Mahama by writing a long and baseless reaction to the call by the former President for the challenges that have followed the poor implementation of Free SHS by the government to be fixed”.

The statement further noted that “it is also important to let him know that for a government that answers the issue of roads, healthcare, sanitation, supply of potable water, etc. with free SHS, we cannot keep quiet over its shambolic implementation by the Akufo-Addo administration”.

Read the full statement below