Well-coordinated CPP propaganda has misled most Ghanaians into believing that the free-education program was the original brainchild of President Nkrumah; but, in reality, the agenda of providing tuition-free education for postcolonial Ghanaians was integral to the original program of the Danquah-Grant-led United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC). And, in fact, as early as the 1930s, when the future Prime Minister (and later President) Kwame Nkrumah was still a student, both in Ghana and abroad, the Gold Coast Youth Conference (GCYC), which was spearheaded by Dr. J. B. Danquah, and would later morph into the United Gold Coast Convention, the seminal modern Ghanaian political party, fully recognized the imperative necessity of providing all able-bodied Ghanaians with a tuition-free education as a means of rapidly advancing the socioeconomic and cultural status of the country at large. Thus free-education as a developmental agenda was very much at the forefront of the UGCC’s independence program.

And it was precisely for this reason that when he expediently broke away to form his Convention People’s Party (CPP), Mr. George Alfred (Paa) Grant would bitterly accuse the Show Boy of having, literally, stolen the political program of the United Gold Coast Convention, including Nkrumah’s establishment of the Ghana National Colleges all across the country (see Dennis Austin’s Ghanaian Politics: 1946-1960). And so, it ought not to come as any surprise, at all, to well-meaning Ghanaians that Nana Akufo-Addo, flagbearer of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), would be talking about making public-tertiary academies readily accessible to all Ghanaians by the end of his first term in office. And, needless to say, it is precisely this welfarist agenda of the NPP that makes it the best political party in Ghana today. It is also ironically sad that the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) should be able to build a remarkable following through the shameless and false application of political labels. Recently, for example, the Rawlings Corporation (R.C. Unlimited) has been presenting itself to the Ghanaian electorate as a “Social Democratic Party.” And it is quite clear that whoever introduced this ideological label to the P/NDC does not understand what it really means to be described as a “Social Democrat.” Maybe the woebegone label-peddler was confused over the discrete difference between “Socialism” and “Democratic Socialism,” which is both welfarist and industrial capitalist in orientation and the kind of agenda so creatively being pursued by the ruling New Patriotic Party. And it is what Dr. J. B. Danquah, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics, meant when he pragmatically and cognitively alluded to the best means of ensuring Ghana’s rapid modernization by means of forging “a property-owning democracy” with ineluctable sensitivity to the needs and welfare of the economically underprivileged.

Predictably, cynical detractors of the Danquah-Busia Tradition have made lifelong careers out of falsely portraying this expansive Danquahist ideology as one that is hardnosed and hermetically elitist. In any case, it is tantamount to criminally false self-advertisement for the flagbearer of the opposition P/NDC, Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills, to be claiming that the populist ideological juggernaut which, for two decades, completely wrecked Ghana’s economy is now, somehow, a “Social Democratic Party.” To begin with, a party that miserably failed to ensure that every Ghanaian child had access to a tuition-free primary education, cannot be trusted with the destiny of our country, much less have its hollow promise of building at least one public university in every region of the country readily bought by the electorate.

Needless to say, such a purchase would be too expensive and unwise an investment choice. After all, we already know from looking at Mr. Rawlings’ so-called University of Development Studies (UDS), the likely quality of an Atta-Mills University of Brong-Ahafo, as already promised by P/NDC flagbearer. By the same token, and based on the unquestionably admirable re-introduction of a tuition-free primary – or basic – education by the Kufuor Government of the New Patriotic Party, as well as the auspicious introduction of the Free-Meal Program, that when NPP Presidential Candidate for Election 2008, Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo promises to make public universities readily accessible to every able-bodied, or academically qualified, Ghanaian, you can rest assured that the former Ghanaian Foreign Minister knows exactly what he is talking about.

Nevertheless, this writer wishes to take this privileged opportunity to counsel Nana Akufo-Addo regarding the far more practical reality of launching his tuition-free tertiary education program on a “targeted” or, more prosaically, an “Installment Plan.” Such targeted plan would initially focus on waiving full-tuition fees for university students who opt to major in such critical disciplines of national endeavor as Nursing, Medicine and Education, with the rest of the students paying half or partial tuition; and then as the nation’s economic capacity strengthens, extending the tuition-free program into such equally critical disciplines as Engineering, Computer Science and Information Technology.

Ultimately, though, it is very important for each and every presidential candidate of Election 2008 to honestly face the Ghanaian voters and make our people aware of the grim factual reality that the well-endowed Ghana of the 1950s and early 1960s, with merely one-third of the country’s 2008 population, no longer exists. And also the fact that while an Akufo-Addo Government, for example, may be able to link the northern and southern halves of the country with first-class roads and viable irrigational facilities for our diligent but woefully under-appreciated farmers, the prohibitive cost of linking northern and southern Ghana with a railroad system, while seriously contemplated, must be honestly accepted as a central assignment for the next generation of Ghanaian leaders.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 17 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005) and “Selected Political Writings” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.