I was quite emotional watching a video clip of young and precocious sixteen year old girl who was honestly voicing out her fears of losing out on her aspiration of attending the Free SHS, should someone who does not fancy the policy is elected on 7th December 2024.

I was so impressed with the unassuming young girl who has an ambition of becoming a nurse and entrepreneur in the future.

During the school vacation, this young industrious girl would spend about GH45 to prepare sweets(toffees) and accrue a profit around GH55 a day.

Unfortunately, however, the unpretentious young girl is not at the voting age yet and has therefore urged her well-wishers, parents, and siblings to vote for whoever has the Free SHS at heart in order to have the opportunity to attend the Free SHS in the near future.

I empathise with the young girl; I am of the opinion that any future leader who does not like the idea of free secondary education can consciously abandon the well-received Free SHS policy implemented by the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration in 2017.

It must be noted that the free secondary education is subject to the availability of resources, 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.

For example, Article 38(3) of Ghana’s 1992 Constitution suggests that the state shall, ‘subject to the availability of resources’ provide equal and balanced access to secondary education and other pre-tertiary education.

If you may recall, during the 2016 electioneering campaign, former President John Dramani 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.”

He lamented again in 2020: “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?”

What former President Mahama is refusing to understand is that the provision of Free SHS is a judicious way in distributing the national resources, which to date, has paved way for more than 3 million children including those whose parents were in penury and would not have had the opportunity to enter senior high school.

The fact of the matter is that by implementing the Free SHS, the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration has estimably upheld the international human rights provision on free universal secondary education, encapsulated in Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economics, Social and Cultural Rights.

Of course, like any other policy, the Free SHS has its own challenges. However, on the preponderance of probability, the positives outweigh the negatives within the Free SHS implementation.

Regrettably, the NDC operatives uncharacteristically sponsored countless adverts and campaigned messages against the poverty reduction Free SHS policy during the 2016 electioneering campaign.

Disappointingly, no less a person than Ex-President Mahama has been criticising Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration for implementing the Free SHS policy 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.”

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

What is more pleasing to some of us is that, the social mobility improvement Free SHS policy will at least provide a sound and congenial environment for the students to develop to their full potential and to have a reasonable chance of leading productive and creative lives.

That being said, we cannot vouch for the sustainability of the free SHS policy should Ghanaians make a terrible mistake and hand over the poverty alleviation free SHS programme back to the NDC in the near future.

Our fears stem from the fact that since the implementation of the free SHS policy by the NPP administration, the minority NDC operatives have gathered momentum and called uncountable press conferences with the view to discrediting the policy.

I, for one, do not anticipate the worried young intelligent girl and her likes benefiting from the Free SHS policy should Ghanaians make a terrible mistake and hand over the poverty alleviation Free SHS policy back to whoever does not fancy the policy in the near future.