A former Defense Minister Dr. Benjamin Kumbour, has challenged Ghanaians to desist from the practice whereby people consult influence peddlers or politicians in order to get into tertiary institutions.

Referring to the practice as a modern social decay, Dr. Kumbour stressed that the procedure usually churns out students who do not know how to work in a specified field of work because they got there through ‘protocol means’.

“Hardly can any deserving student today get into a tertiary institution without going to see a politician, a big man, or some influence peddler so what do you expect?,” he queried.

The former Defense Minister continued to add that “your protocol student when he enters university definitely wants protocol questions to write the exam. Once he gets the protocol questions he’s eventually going to come out with a protocol first class. He’s likely to be given a protocol scholarship to go outside the country to study.

“Indeed if he finishes and remains there the country is glad, if he chooses to come back he will get a very high protocol office. This student doesn’t know anything apart from protocol, so what does he do, he settles down to reproduce his protocol kind.”

He lamented that if the practice is not curbed, “a time will come that we will not know whether people earn the position that they occupy”.

Dr. Benjamin Kumbour and other prominent individuals as well as NDC executives spoke at the Maiden Revolutionary Lecture Series held at the Ghana College of Surgeons and Physicians in Accra.