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Opinions on Friday, November 13, 2020
Columnist: Kwaku badu
2020-11-13
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and John Dramani Mahama
In a grand scheme of things, the human development process in the form of Akufo-Addo’s Free SHS should at least create an environment for people, individually and collectively, to develop to their full potential and have a reasonable opportunity to lead. productive products and creative lives.
“The introduction of Free SHS was not based on a pompous political agenda to take over the social democratic narratives of those who, surprisingly, have avoided their ideology for quick wins (Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta 2019).”
You may agree or disagree, but the fact is that by implementing Free SHS, Akufo-Addo is graciously working towards poverty canker reduction.
Suffice it to emphasize that education drives the development of a nation. Therefore, the logical approach to improving accessibility and quality is not through political rhetoric and broken promises, but through well-thought-out policies such as Akufo-Addo’s Free SHS.
Given the enormous benefits that education offers, it is indeed prudent and somewhat progressive for the Akufo-Addo government to attempt to bridge the widening gulf of social inequalities by rationally distributing national resources in the form of free SHS. .
Furthermore, the fact that the former ambivalent NDC government unnecessarily left behind enormous debt amid harsh socioeconomic living standards is, in fact, commendable for the Akufo-Addo government to allow itself to implement the seemingly admirable, yet costly intervention. Social. as Free SHS.
If we walk down memory lane, a unique campaign message that dominated the 2008, 2012 and 2016 general elections was Free SHS poverty alleviation.
While candidate Akufo-Addo and his PNP promised to implement Free SHS if elected to power, candidate Mahama and his NDC were vigorously campaigning against politics everywhere.
Sadly, however, Ghanaians mistakenly accepted NDC’s ‘sugarcoat message’ in two consecutive elections (2008 and 2012) and rejected the seemingly advantageous Free SHS offer.
But lo and behold, on December 7, 2016, the good folks of Ghana saw the light and gave the ‘promising’ of Free SHS (Akufo-Addo) massive endorsement.
However, it must be recognized that within a year of his four-year term, President Akufo-Addo implemented the Free SHS to the delight of Ghanaian parents and their children in an estimable manner.
Sadly, however, none other than former President Mahama has been conveniently and persistently criticizing Akufo-Addo for implementing the free SHS policy, allegedly at the expense of other development projects (see: ‘Free SHS Paralyzing Other Sectors-Mahama, classfmonline.com/ghanaweb.com, 02/24/2018).
At times, one cannot help but warmly applaud some of our politicians for their incredible prowess in systematically spreading propaganda designed to mislead or proselytize unsuspecting Ghanaians into accepting their parish agenda.
Former President Mahama was said to have lamented during one of the NDC’s unit health walks: “The problem facing this government and it is in their own interest is that Free Senior High School is absorbing all the fiscal space they have and Therefore, almost all the money you have, you have to put it into Free Senior High School. So you can’t pay the District Assemblies Common Fund, you can’t pay the NHIS (National Health Insurance Scheme), you can’t pay the GET (Ghana Education Trust Fund), you can’t pay other salaries and things because all your money is going to free upper secondary school. “
Under the circumstances, observers can draw an adverse inference from previous criticisms that Mahama does not like the Free SHS and is therefore unwilling to spend a large amount of money to implement the policy.
So it’s no wonder that Mahama and minority NDC operatives prefer “progressively free” (whatever that means) to completely free NPPs.
In fact, unless I seem to be the worst performer in math, I cannot understand how and why the ‘progressively free SHS’ of GH48 per NDC student is better than the NPP GH1844.27 per student per year.
Dear reader, is it not misleading that after campaigning and voting against Free SHS poverty alleviation during the 2016 election, albeit unsuccessfully, NDC agents would now turn around and seek to claim ownership of Free SHS ?
Of course, universal free education has been introduced in various jurisdictions on our own continent, Africa.
Despite initial challenges, the policy has been sufficient in those jurisdictions. So why not in Ghana?
In 2007, Uganda became the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to introduce free universal secondary education. Under the secondary scheme, students who earn specific grades on each of the four elementary school final exams study for free in public schools and participate in private schools.
The Kenyan government, in 2002, declared a universal free primary school and followed up with a free secondary education program in 2008.
In Namibia, a former South African colony under apartheid, primary education was declared free in 2012, while secondary education became free as of 2016.
The Free SHS poverty alleviation policy, in fact, reinforces the United Nations vision of human development and the right to development.
However, we must not lose sight of the fact that, according to the right to development, development is shifting from the conventional approach to the human rights approach, in which the focus is on equity and social justice (Mansell and Scot 1994 ).
It was in this context that the international community agreed to work in Valencia to help underdeveloped nations in accordance with the provisions of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development.
So far, the international community has made concerted efforts to realize the right to development by first implementing the eight Millennium Development Goals with a view to developing a global partnership for development (Alston 2005).
It appears that the MDGs came to an end at the end of 2015 and were replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to the Sustainable Development Goals, all countries would be obliged to meet the goals established in them (UN 2015).
Indeed, as the international community moves towards the implementation and monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals agenda for 2030, the human development approach continues to be useful for articulating development goals and improving people’s well-being by guarantee a fair, sustainable and stable world.
In essence, human development or the human development approach is about expanding the richness of human life. It is an approach that focuses on people and their opportunities and options.
Human development actually focuses on improving people’s lives rather than assuming that economic growth will automatically lead to greater well-being for all.
In other words, human development is about giving people more freedom to live the lives they value. In effect, this involves developing people’s capacities and giving them the opportunity to improve their lives.
Take, for example, that educating large numbers of children would develop their skills, but it is of little or no use if they are denied access to jobs or do not have the right skills for the local job market.
Basically, human development is about more options. It’s about providing opportunities for people.
The human development approach, developed by economist Mahbub Ul Haq, is summed up in the work of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on human capabilities, often framed in terms of whether people can “be” and “do” desirable things in the world. lifetime. Examples include: Beings: well fed, protected, healthy; Activities: work, education, voting, participation in community life (HDR 2015).
Since 1990, 2 billion people have emerged from low human development, extreme income poverty has been reduced by more than one billion. All regions of the world have seen progress in the Human Development Index (HDI) (HDI 2015).
In short, some of us par excellence will always choose Akufo-Addo’s SHS Comprehensively Free over Mahama’s SHS Progressively Free.
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