School-Feeding Program Can Never Be Too Expensive!!!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

I read the article titled “School Feeding Program Is Too Expensive” (Ghanaweb.com 7/25/08) with wistfulness because, as far as yours truly is concerned, the School-Feeding Program comes almost 40 years behind schedule. It also irritates me quite a bit to realize that if the very first government of postcolonial Ghana, the Convention People’s Party (CPP), had been thoughtful enough about the invaluable human capital that is our youngest and most economically and culturally vulnerable, President Kwame Nkrumah would not have expended billions of Ghanaian pounds erecting personal statues and monuments all over Ghana and other African countries like Mali and Guinea, in the dubious name of African unity. For, the incontrovertible reality of statesmanship inheres in the perennial and unassailable dictum of “Charity begins at home.”

Alas, President Nkrumah elected to foster a myopic cult of personality over the rapid and collective development of Ghana. In the process, the cult leader outgrew the sacred mandate of the people who elected him as their leader – at least in his own self-centered opinion and flighty imagination – and proceeded to recklessly and brazenly use his mandate and his country as footstools for boosting his vaulting continental African and global ambitions. Else, it wouldn’t have fallen to a charitable Dutch government, now, to generously implement Ghana’s pilot School-Feeding Program.

Pathetically interestingly, though, ideological supporters and sympathizers of Nkrumaism would rather wax stentorian about the CPP’s Free-Education Program, than take serious account of the fact that a tuition-free educational program cannot be functionally productive without a crucial and supportive canteen or cafeteria program. In sum, had Nkrumah and his minions been foresighted enough, they would have also learned from even the lowest-ranking Ghanaian soldier that, indeed, “A soldier walks on his/her stomach.” In sum, those cynics who would rather have pupils from poor and destitute homes study on a diet of hot air, than the salutary pursuit of a multi-faceted and organic approach to basic education, obviously have no remarkable appreciation of national development. Indeed, one such critic of the School-Feeding Program even had the self-righteous occasion to quote the Presidential Candidate of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo, grossly out of context, by wishing parents having extreme difficulty in feeding their children tough luck, by which the journalist and radio commentator simply meant: just collect these poor pupils into a bonfire pile and dispatch them to hell! The fact that, indeed, the presumptive next president of Ghana is widely known to be a staunch believer in the welfare of the down-trodden, did not seem to matter, not in the least bit, to Mr. Ato Kwamina Dadzie.

That fifty-one years into Ghana’s status as a sovereign nation, the burden of responsible statesmanship appears to have squarely fallen on yet another erstwhile colonial power, the government of the Netherlands, in this particular instance, is, indeed, a disconsolately sad commentary on the history of postcolonial Ghana. And if going by cynical rump-CPP mantra this, too, constitutes an insufferable instance of neocolonialism, then all that yours truly can say, by way of a riposte, is: More power to neocolonialism! Still, one hopes to the high heavens that the likes of Mr. Ato Kwamina Dadzie are not suggesting that political sovereignty and autarky are functional, or practical, synonyms.

Reading the article titled “School Feeding Program Is Too Expensive,” I couldn’t help being goose-bumped and having a tear or two drop out of my eyes. For the program reminded me of Ms. Cecilia Brakowaa, a classmate of mine at the Akyem-Asiakwa Presbyterian Primary School, in the early 1970s, who would definitely have immensely benefited some 36 years ago, had such a healthy program existed in Ghana’s public school system. It would also have enabled Cecilia Brakowaa to have proven to the naysayers and ill-wishers that, indeed, she was not in the least bit the dumbest pupil in our class.

Brakowaa’s lack of proper nutrition, in retrospect, appears to have been largely responsible for the many sores that littered and festered all over her body, particularly at such joint areas as her elbows and ankles. And because of the constant sores on her body, Brakowaa’s classmates virtually ostracized her. And because of her multiple sores which, her detractors claimed, made her stink to the proverbial high heavens, almost nobody would volunteer to pair up with Brakowaa at her desk. Yours truly once volunteered; and I must promptly confess that it took a lot of courage to contend with all the brigades of houseflies that appeared to have made a punching bag out of Brakowaa’s penurious circumstances.

My beloved classmate herself was quite a neat girl if, not, in fact, the neatest girl in class, except that she did not seem to have had the means of purchasing such basic first-aid needs as plaster or bandage and penicillin ointment. And so flies would continue to poke fun at her until, finally having had enough, Brakowaa dropped out of school. Thus, for me, the current New Patriotic Party-partnered School-Feeding Program means the salvation and academic and cultural development of hundreds of thousands of potential Brakowaas. And this is precisely why yours truly is in complete and unreserved agreement with Mr. Michael Nsowah, the newly appointed National Coordinator for the Ghana School-Feeding Program (GSFP), that every creative measure must be taken by the Government and people of Ghana to ensure that this laudable and all-too-civilized and critical component of a good education does not become a proverbial nine-day wonder.

Indeed, about the only aspect of his quite comprehensive assessment of the School-Feeding Program that appeared to be sorely lacking, was Mr. Nsowah’s forgivable failure to highlight the fact that a well-fed pupil is also invariably one that is rendered intellectually sound and capable of creative engagement. For any school-feeding program, whether in Ghana or the United States, aims to create a healthy future generation poised to leading our country into a prosperous destiny. But even more significant must be realized the fact that one can successfully gauge the future outlook and prospects of Ghana’s current adult population, by simply looking at the academic and cultural preparedness of today’s children.

*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 “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008) and “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].