God, in my humble opinion, is the greatest social interventionist who touched the hearts of altruistic men and women to conceive and deliver social interventions like the Free SHS, NHIS, One Constituency One Ambulance, the Nurses and Teachers Allowances, the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty(LEAP) and therefore would not support the cancelation of such advantageous policies and programmes.

We should not lose sight of the fact that the introduction of the Free SHS has paved the way for more than five million children including those whose parents were in abject penury and would not have had the opportunity to enter senior high school.

I would, therefore, like to presume that God won’t ordain an anti-social intervention, who does not like the idea of free secondary education and can consciously abandon the well-received Free SHS policy implemented by the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration in 2017.

Unfortunately, free secondary education is subject to the availability of resources, and therefore, any leader who does not fancy the seemingly advantageous policy could well put forward a flimsy excuse of lack of resources and cancel the policy accordingly.

By and large, the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration is graciously working towards the reduction of the canker of poverty in Ghana by implementing the Free SHS.

My dear reader, education, as a matter of fact, drives the development of a nation. And therefore the logical approach to improving accessibility and quality is not through political rhetoric and unfulfilled promises, but through well-thought-through policies such as the Free SHS.

Given the enormous benefits of education, it was, indeed, prudent and somewhat forward-thinking for the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration to seek to bridge the ever widening social inequalities chasm through rational distribution of national resources in the form of Free SHS.

Besides, the fact that the erstwhile Mahama administration needlessly left behind a huge debt stock amid harsh socio-economic standards of living , it was, indeed, commendable for the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration to afford to implement the seemingly admirable, albeit costly social intervention such as Free SHS.

If we stroll down memory lane, one unique campaign message that dominated the 2008, 2012 and 2016 general elections was the poverty alleviation Free SHS.

While candidate Akufo-Addo and his NPP were promising to implement Free SHS if voted into power, candidate Mahama and his NDC were all over the place campaigning vigorously against the policy.

Regrettably, however, Ghanaians mistakenly bought into NDC’s ‘sugar–coated message’ in two consecutive elections (2008 and 2012) and turned down the seemingly advantageous Free SHS offer.

But lo and behold, on 7th December 2016, the good people of Ghana saw the light and gave the Free SHS ‘promiser’ (Akufo-Addo) a massive endorsement.

To his credit though, within a year into his four year mandate, President Akufo-Addo estimably implemented the Free SHS to the delight of Ghanaian parents and their children.

Regrettably, however, no less a person than Ex-President Mahama conveniently and persistently criticised Akufo-Addo for implementing the Free SHS policy, allegedly, at the expense of other developmental projects (see: ‘Free SHS crippling other sectors-Mahama, classfmonline.com/ghanaweb.com, 24/02/2018).

Former President Mahama is said to have lamented during one of the NDC’s unity health walks: “The problem this government is facing and it is in their own interest, is that, Free Senior High School is absorbing all the fiscal space they have and so almost every money you have, you are having to put it into Free Senior High School. So you can’t pay District Assemblies Common Fund, you can’t pay NHIS (National Health Insurance Scheme), you can’t pay GET Fund (Ghana Education Trust Fund), you can’t pay other salaries and things because all your money is going into Free Senior High School.”

If you may recall, during the 2016 electioneering campaign, former President Mahama was captured on tape emitting vehemently: “Hey! That Ghana must not introduce Free SHS on a whimsical promise of a desperate politician”. “Many mistakes have been made by countries in Africa already with Free SHS.”

Again, in 2020, he lamented: “The government has budgeted 2 billion cedis for Free SHS for this academic year”. “If you have 2 billion more to spend on education, would you spend all of it on Free SHS, so that even when people can afford to pay, they don’t have to pay?”

Given the circumstances, observers can draw the inference from the preceding criticisms that Mahama does not fancy the Free SHS, and therefore he is not ready to spend huge amount of money to run the policy.

Some of us, as a matter of principle, will continue to sing the praises of Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration for graciously bequeathing the Free SHS to the generations yet unborn.

K. Badu, UK.

k.badu2011@gmail.com