A member of the National Democratic Congress’ manifesto committee, Dr. Clement Abas Apaak, has defended the proposal made by the former President and flagbearer for the NDC, John Dramani Mahama, to scrap tertiary fees for all first-year students.

Dr. Clement Apaak said, “One of the challenges students face is their ability to pay fees, and it has recently become obvious that the number of students who write WASSCE and proceed to the university is not encouraging, and this is because the money to pay fees is a problem."

“When we engaged with youth groups on how to resolve this, waiving off fees for first-year students came up strongly.

“From the figures that we have, if we are to go by some information that has been put out by our good brother Kofi Asare of Africa Education Watch, they estimate that if one was to look at the number of students who took up places in tertiary institutions in the 2023/2024 academic year, they are less than 200,000, and when you look at the academic fees of first-year students on average, it works out to anywhere between GH¢2,000 and GH¢2,300 thereabout.

“So if we were to use that as a base, we could posit that the policy will cost less than GH¢300 million a year, and of course, student numbers fluctuate each year, so it is doable, and if we were to plug revenue loopholes, we should be able to mobilize the resources to fund this proposal," he said.

Dr. Clement Apaak’s defense comes in response to various uncertainties expressed by some Ghanaians over the announcement made by former President John Dramani Mahama to help alleviate the worries of parents and first-year tertiary students over their inability to pay for their first-year fees by absorbing them.

He argued that the proposed policy aims to address this issue if the NDC wins the upcoming general elections.

During the NDC youth manifesto launch in Accra on Monday, August 12, the flagbearer, John Dramani Mahama, promised to introduce the policy to support struggling students.