The National Council for Curriculum Assessment (NaCCA) cannot take any punitive measures against some publishers who flooded the market with textbooks that contained “bigoted” content, Education Minister Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum has told Parliament.

Answering a question filed by North Tongu MP Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa on the floor of the Parliament on Thursday, 25 March 2021 about the textbooks, Dr Adutwum said the yet-to-be-approved Ghana Book Development Council Bill, will be able to deal with such cases in the future.

“The Ghana Book Development Council Bill has those provisions for sanctions to be taken against publishers like this”, he said.

“Unfortunately”, he noted, “the NaCCA Act does not make provision for that, so, inasmuch as you are scandalized and you do not want to see these things happening, in terms of the legal framework in which NaCCA operates, they do not have the room to do that but the Book Development Council is going to cure this deficiency.”

The books: History of Ghana, Textbook 3 authored by Badu Nkansah and Nelly Martinson Anim; as well as Golden English Basic 4 authored by Okyere Baafi Alexander, were widely condemned on social media.

NaCCA later came out to say they had not been approved.

The publishers issued apologies for the circulation of the books.