Opinions of Thursday, 21 July 2022
Columnist: Anthony Obeng Afrane
2022-07-21How Mahama tackled schools under trees
John Dramani Mahama - Former president of Ghana
A very good friend of mine made a brilliant contribution on a social media platform and I would like to quote him, "The economic sanctions against Russia is likely to cause gas scarcity across Europe, but as usual Africa is watching with folded arms without taking advantage of the situation.
"Ghana and Nigeria should stop chasing expensive loans and plan
Read full articlehow we can stop flaring our gas into the air and negotiate for export opportunity as long as the Ukraine/Russian war last."
Like the eagle who takes advantage of the storm to soar, great leaders like H.E. John Mahama make the best out of a worst situation, and I am going to take sometime to serialised parts of the Green Book of the NDC to throw more light on what President Mahama did in the education sector.
His Basic Education Programme provided equitable access to good quality and child-friendly universal basic education.
This was achieved through significant improvements in infrastructure, provision of teaching and learning materials, enhancement of quality teaching, management and supervision of schools, as well as delivery of social intervention programmes.
Against these, the following interventions were made:
A total of 1,614 out of 2,578 basic schools projects were completed under the Schools Under Trees Programme.
A number of teachers bungalows, education offices, sanitation blocks and 203 out of 232 classroom blocks were completed.
The school shift system, through which pupils run shifts due to lack of adequate classrooms were eliminated in many communities. With this, it became difficult for school children to skip school to play truant in the name of the school shift system.
Besides, over 100 million free exercise books were distributed. In 2013 alone, 32 million exercise books were distributed to 4,768,806 pupils across the country while 10 million exercise books were distributed in 2014.
These are remarkable! Isn't it? You haven't seen anything yet. That is John Dramani Mahama for you. Just stay tuned for some fascinating stuff in the coming days.
To be continued.
