You couldn’t provide a single textbook under Progressive Free SHS – NAPO jabs Mahama

Education minister, Dr Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, popularly known as NAPO, has jabbed former President John Mahama over his comments on the ruling government’s flagship Free SHS policy.

According to him, Mr. Mahama has absolutely no grounds to make those statements when his performance was below par as far as the progressive free SHS program under his administration is concerned.


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Former President addressing some party faithful at the Sixth National Democratic Congress (NDC) Unity walk at Somanya criticized government’s ‘rush’ implementation of the Free SHS policy. He stated that the current implementation of the free SHS policy if not properly handled could derail the entire purpose of the program.

“It will do the government good if we have a stakeholders conference and agree on the pace of implementation to free funds for other important projects like the ‘one district one factory and the one village one dam programmes,” Mahama said.

He then accused the government of pushing all available resources into funding the free SHS programme to the extent that government now had no funds for the District Assemblies common fund, National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), GETFUND and other statutory payments.

John Mahama said the strategy adopted in the implementation of the free SHS programme had raised issues of inadequate dormitories to house the students, classrooms, textbooks laboratories, dining halls and other facilities for effective teaching and learning.

Reacting to the claims on Accra-based Peace FM Monday morning, Matthew Opoku-Prempeh likened Mr. Mahama to the hypocritical Pharisees in the Bible who made it a point to criticize every good deed of Jesus and yet found themselves doing worse. He accused Mr. Mahama of failing to provide a single textbook to any institution under his two-year progressive Free SHS program.

“Mahama as Vice President and President for eight years did not provide Senior High Schools with a single textbook, let alone when he started his progressive free SHS……Today, we have had a government who has provided the Senior High Schools with textbooks, exercise books and notebooks but John Mahama is still not pleased with it” he added.

NAPO further quizzed if the former President for two years of his reign in office was able to pay the 30 Ghana cedis tution fee for a single school going child. He challenged the former President and his administration to provide Ghanaians with policy documents used for the two-year progressive free Senior High School (SHS) that was introduced under his administration.

“Tell John Mahama to produce his guiding, strategic and policy documents used under the two-year progressive free SHS program and show them to Ghanaians. If he can’t produce it then he is just speaking in vain.”