Akufo-Addo's Free SHS Is A 419!

Part II, Feature Article,
by Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro.

Nana Akufo-Addo has so far proclaimed “free SHS education” as the flag-ship of his 2012 election campaign bid. In the part one, I questioned the logic of basing a massive government expenditure from funds directly accruing from our oil resources as short-sighted as it is bound to grind to a screeching halt as the non-renewable resource peaks and peter-out. I did not only criticise without offering a suggestion. I also suggested the example of how agriculture, a renewable resource, was used in the past by the Nkrumah Administration, as the basis of the accelerated educational programme that the government embarked upon successfully. One area where we saw sharp differences between the President and the NPP flag-bearer, was over the question of the Ivory Coast. In this article, I wish to explore the contradictions between the dependency on the oil, and their loyalties to the current Ivorian regime, and how that connects with the funding of “fee SHS education”.

Isn't it amazing to read from people like Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., vehemently in-tow behind the Akufo-Addo-led campaign swindle of free SHS for Ghanaians, at the expense of almost everything else? Yes, “everything else”, even including the Jubilee Oil Fields, which is supposed to fund his so-called “free SHS education”! Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe just wrote, “Please, President Mahama, Let Education Collapse Ghana!,” Feature Article of Monday, 3 December 2012, Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame, and just before that “Nana Konadu Gives Significant Boost to Akufo-Addo Education Plan”, Feature Article of Friday, 30 November 2012, Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame, and many more before.

For those who do not follow the thinking and motivations behind their politics, I recommend that people read some of Okoampa writings on various subjects. For instance, it is quite remarkable to read from the same Kwame Okoampa publicly announcing his happiness at the news that La Côte d’Ivoire is claiming our Jubilee Fields! This same Okoampa is telling Ghanaians that his uncle is going to finance their education with the proceeds from the same Jubilee Fields! Okoampa actually wrote that, "I am glad that, finally, the Ivorians are beginning to assert their right of access and enjoyment of Ghana's purportedly new-found oil wealth..." What makes you think we don't know you people enough? You are campaigning for free education based on our oil revenues whilst at the same time selling Ghana out to the Ivory Coast's Alassane Ouattara!

Isn't this what you wrote yourself when the Ivory Coast was claiming our oil? Okoampa begins an article surreptitiously titled "Who Are These “Parliamentarian Drivers”? with a shocker: "I am glad that, finally, the Ivorians are beginning to assert their right of access and enjoyment of Ghana's purportedly new-found oil wealth... It also didn't quite make a lot of sense to me that an oil find that lay so dangerously close to Ghana's border with Côte d'Ivoire would also have been so [godlessly] uncharitable as to neatly parcel itself out for the exclusive benefit and enjoyment of Ghanaians while the war-seasoned Ivorians continued to languish in penury." - "Who Are These “Parliamentarian Drivers”? By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., Feature Article of Tuesday, 16 March 2010.

Okoampa continues:

"What is also wickedly fascinating is the sudden fit of alarm that seems to have gripped the hitherto light-headed Ghanaians. All of an auspicious sudden, it is beginning to home-in to these soft-headed, happy-go-lucky and good-natured “Niggers” that premature gloating over a pure gift of nature may yet turn out to be too good to be true. It was also rather fitfully amusing that some Ghanaians should already begin to be angrily chary of the Ivorians; and, indeed, the irony of it all is that these “Angernistas” are largely what one may aptly term as diehard “Nkrumacrats,” the fanatical disciples of modern Ghana's first postcolonial premier. Dear reader, by now, it ought to be obvious to you what “Sremu Sei Nana” (The King of the Savannah's Grandson) is getting at. And, of course, it is the stark fact that where “Black Gold” is concerned, pan-Africanism is only the dream of a hopeless lunatic."

At the just ended IEA debate, Akufo-Addo displayed a loyalty to Ouattara that rose over and above any need to protect the Jubilee Oil Fields being claimed by Alassane Ouattara.

As Kwesi Pratt puts it,

Now with reference to La Côte d’Ivoire, I am surprised that anybody discussing the relations between Ghana and La Côte d’Ivoire could ignore the claim that our oil resources, or part of our oil resources belong to La Côte d’Ivoire! Over the last year or two, La Côte d’Ivoire has made all kinds of claims on Ghana’s Jubilee Field, to the extent that the Ivorian National Petroleum Company issued a threat to the operators in the Jubilee Field to stop work or face the consequences.

Now, any Ghanaian with an interest in the protection of Ghana’s resources and its utilization for the development of our people if he wants to comment about the relationship with La Côte d’Ivoire ought to focus some attention on the claims of the Ouattara Administration that part or all of our oil resources belong to them. Nana Akufo-Addo was not interested in that. His main interest was how to keep Ouattara in power. And as a Ghanaian, I am totally disgusted by this picture of a man who wants to be the President of the Republic of Ghana!

He is not interested in the Ivorian claims at all! But, you know what makes it worse? When Nana Akufo-Addo was asked how he would find resources to support his free Senior High School proposal, he said it would be revenue form the oil. Now, if that is the case, just in case La Côte d’Ivoire succeeded in claiming a substantial part of our oil resources, it would mean that the free SHS proposal have collapsed at birth. And yet Nana Akufo-Addo is not interested in protecting source of the resources he would use to fund the free SHS system that he has proposed. That is how serious he appears to be about the free SHS! The very source of funding, he is not interested in protecting, and I find that worrying."

You may read and listen to the full text here:» GHANA: “Akufo-Addo Subverts Ghanaian Interests At The IEA Debate!” – Kwesi Pratt, Jnr.: http://www.panafricanistinternational.org/?p=1875


For Life, the Environment, and Social Justice!

Nana Akyea Mensah, Ghana Steering Committee,
P-AI, Social Media Campaigns | December 2, 2012
SocialMedia@panafricanistinternational.org

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