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Also the Ghana National Association of Farmers and Fishermen,
the only farmers' body recognised by the 1992 Constitution of
Ghana, is already doing some of the things that I have described.
They have a membership of about 3.5 million people so any
government that works in collaboration with them should increase
productivity within the first two seasons of the year of taking
office.
Education
This is the clearest and most direct way out of individual poverty.
The capitation and school feeding programmes are all in the right
direction. While they have increased enrolments and need to be
expanded and improved, the educational facilities have not been
increased alongside; there are no classrooms. Teacher training and
improved conditions of service for teachers, coupled with
curriculum reform, not in changing the number of years, but in
course content will add quality to quantity to lift the nation up. In
this regard, we will emphasise mathematics, science and add a
course we call “Thinking”. This subject will start to encourage
Ghanaian children to solve their own problems such as disposal of
the garbage around them or how to convert the fibre of the cocoa
pod into a value- added product.
Science is a practical subject and even during the First
Republic, rocket science was taught by launching rockets on the
school soccer pitches. I remember walking almost from Tamale
Secondary School to Ghana College a distance of about maybe
10 miles to witness a rocket because that was the time of space
exploration and we were all excited about it. So our science and
our teaching should be practically oriented. I am sure that if you
go to Legon and you go into the geology class and show some of
the students rocks from a mining area that may have diamond in
it they may be happy to see that this is a piece of rock because our
education is chew, pour, pass and forget.
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Youth empowerment starts with making education accessible to
them and almost on their terms; that is, make education flexible to
accommodate every child to some extent. Night school for young
adults who for one reason or the other failed to complete a school
course could still salvage them and take them off the streets. The
School for Life programme will be adopted nationwide to rescue
the kayayes and other street children. Child labour will be outlawed
by revising the compulsory Fee-Free Education Law. A
programme to teach work ethics to our students will be introduced
by giving tax rebates to companies and firms that employ students
during their long vacation periods. Each school child will be
supplied with a lap top computer. In rural areas, this programme
will fall under the rural development programme to make sure the
enabling environment is there. There is no point giving someone a
laptop when there is no electricity or telecommunication facilities.
Each regional capital will obtain a university with each region
providing some specialty for example the Volta Region providing
a university that will train artisans to the highest level. Some
people out there might ask, “Where is Mahama getting the money
to start all these universities” The first and only secondary school
in the whole north (northern territories currently called Northern,
Upper West and Upper East regions) for a long time was a middle
school turned into a secondary. Chief Adam is here; he will bear
me witness. I attended that school even the Vice President, Aliu
Mahama, attended it.
The buildings were round huts. It didn't stop chief from becoming
an engineer neither did it stop Aliu Mahama from becoming the
Vice President of Ghana. He started his secondary education in
round huts. So we can make use of what we have that is what the
colonialists taught us because they did this when the north agitated
for education. In fact my older brother who died was sent home
because he demonstrated against the kind of education they were
giving the northerners. He had to continue his education at
Mfantsipim.
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