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The Free Senior High School (SHS) Policy is ambitiously selfless and the righteous system for Ghana and Africa, the 2016 independent presidential candidate, Mr Jacob Osei Yeboah, has stated.

In his view, the free SHS programme is a means of sharing the national cake by the government with almost every family in the country.

Sharing his perspective with the Daily Graphic, Mr Yeboah, aka JOY, said free SHS was “industrialisation of human resources that the country was endowed with.”

The fundamentals of every economy, he said, was made up of the human and natural resources that each nation was endowed with and that industrialising the human resource could help transform the natural resources.

As a matter of fact, Mr Yeboah said the success of most projects, especially the one-district, one-factory hinged on the free SHS.

He pointed to Mauritius’ righteous system which had yielded 98 per cent literacy rate and “so with only a sugar cane economy, the per capita GDP of Mauritius is over $16,000 while Ghana with all her natural resources still lingers on with per capita GDP of less than $2000.”

The selflessness of free SHS

The selflessness of the free SHS, according to Mr Yeboah, will put enormous pressure on the finances of the nation but he argued that this would, however, reduce the spate of corruption.

“Free SHS can also be seen as a judicious barometer on government spending and an ‘independent prosecutor’ of corruption,” he stated.

The challenges ahead with regard to successful and sustainable implementation, he indicated, were real but easily surmountable.

He said Libya, during the era of Col Muammar Al-Qathafi had far unparalleled righteous system of not only free education but also free accommodation and capital ($50,000) for new couples, interest free loans for entrepreneurs for a desert nation with only oil as the natural resource.

Giant/courageous step

“The Akufo-Addo led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government has taken a giant but courageous step that we must all support for its sustainable implementation,” he added.