Anniversary Of Dr. Nkrumah - What Are We Celebrating?

The appendage of Nkrumah�s birthday as a national holiday is perhaps the most outstanding contribution of President Atta Mills� government towards promoting patriotism in the country. We commend government for such a bold and noble initiative. Considering the hero that Nkrumah is, it is of good purpose that the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) gives him a much wider recognition even as we celebrate him today. Nkrumah indeed laid a very strong foundation which left our country Ghana, with no excuse not to have prospered after fifty-four (54) long years. It is unarguable that Nkrumah should be celebrated for his invaluable contribution towards developing education in this country, but the fact still remains that he has not been duly honoured as a hero. He suffered not just a coup d��tat, but also an overthrow of his vision and policies for the good people of Ghana. NUGS strongly believes that there is no better way to honour a hero like Nkrumah than putting his good policies into practice. As students, we look back on the educational policies of Nkrumah with a sense of pride and dignity and find a worthy cause to celebrate him; conversely, the prevailing conditions of education in Ghana today provide a very austere deviation from the path to sustainable education as developed by Nkrumah. It is instructive to use this occasion to reflect on the policies and strategies Nkrumah�s government adopted to pursue his vision for educational development in the country; also it is important to take a break to assess our performance as a country in respect of our educational advancement. Of our nation�s few tertiary institutions, Nkrumah alone assisted in establishing the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and the University of Cape Coast. In addition to these, he established the Ghana Secondary Schools across the length and breadth of the country. Under Nkrumah�s government, development of education was to achieve three primary goals. And they are: 1. To produce a scientifically literate population 2. To tackle mainly the environmental causes of low productivity 3. To produce knowledge to harness Ghana�s economic potential We must then ask ourselves how close we have come as a nation in achieving these goals. We will for the mean time comment on the first goal of Nkrumah�s educational development plan and later revisit the entire post and pre-independence educational policies. Producing scientifically literate population Scientific literacy must translate into productivity and industrial boost in Ghana, leaving little room for unemployment complaints. In Nkrumah�s address to the legislative council two days before the declaration of independence, he stated that, �we must seek an African view of the African problem. This does not mean western techniques and methods are not applicable to Africa. It does mean, however, that in Ghana we must look at every problem from the African point of view�our whole educational system must be geared towards producing scientifically-technically minded people.� Following the establishment of the ten polytechnics and a few technical and vocational institutions set up by the former President Rawlings�s regime, less attention has been paid to these sectors of education. Former President Kuffour�s government has also contributed to technical education through infrastructural and logistical support in this regard. The previous government also instituted the capitation grant and school feeding programme. In spite of these efforts to boost education, the country still has a wide deficit of technical know-how and very little is being done about it today. Today, we are told KNUST offers 60% science/technology and 40% arts/business courses; we have every cause to worry with this trend. The science and technology departments have not significantly reflected on the development of this nation and we believe a number of reasons have amounted to this. These include outdated curriculum, lack of teaching and learning materials, inadequate research and practical equipment, lack of laboratory facilities to meet the growing student population and many others. Many science students leave our campuses with little or no productive knowledge but rather imbibed formulae and theories. The question is, if our graduates cannot come up with projects to solve problems of sewage management, energy, agricultural production, transportation, pollution etc, then, who should? Nkrumah�s educational agenda was aimed at reducing poverty through economic productivity riding on the back of science and technology but where do we stand today as a nation? Here, we are reminded of the words of Dr. Edward Mahama �I am far from poverty not because I was born into a rich family but because Dr. Kwame Nkrumah gave me an education� We deeply acknowledge efforts made by previous and present governments to provide sound education to citizens of this country but we cannot also overlook the fact that a lot more needs to be done. The present educational establishment is one that has witnessed a multitude of challenges such as lack of accessibility and affordability, financial austerity, and the lack of improvement of physical facilities. We still have over 3000 schools under trees, subventions to educational institutions are scanty and all the burden seem to have been put on the GETFund which was initially established to supplement education in the country. Whereas these challenges pose a serious threat to our development as a nation, the major challenge is the lack of the prioritization of education which remains a peril at the pinnacle of educational development in the country. In line with celebrating this day, we pray all students to use this occasion to reflect on these noble educational objectives of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and hopefully become ambassadors of the Nkrumah agenda for an industrialized Ghana via science and technology. We hope that government will adopt a blueprint for quality education in line with Nkrumah�s development agenda for attaining a wholly literate Ghana within the shortest possible time.