RE: FREE EDUCATION: MENSA OTABIL NEARLY DROPPED OUT OF SCHOOL

Apparently, the NDC's have laid their hands on Mensa Otabil's tape which purportedly, he had said he does not believe in free education, as free is synonymous with lack of quality. But according to the ICGC spokesman Kofi Octhere, the message on the tape was preached a decade ago and therefore he claimed the message was not targeted to take the wind out of sail of NPPs' free education policy. And it is not surprising that the NDC's faceless catatonic hoodlums, perpetrators, muckrakings and sick propagandists of satanic proportion are using the tape to score cheap political points in the ears of chronic ignorants, all in the name of political expediency. Its even an eyesore and distasteful scenario to see a disciple of a stinking-mouth talk like Koku Anyidaho who has all of a sudden turned into an apostle of this tape politics, preaching with biblical quotation that it does not matter whether Otabil preached it in primitive area or stone age times, the words and the vindication are the same today as the word of God preached 2000 years ago. They even call Otabil's vacuous, intellectually incoherent and fallaciously inherent talk on the tape as divine intervention. What a joke of imbeciles and cabals jumping to the tune of a rabble-rouser, a demagogue and ecclesiastically hypocrite like Mensa Otabil.

And to the chargrin and utter dismay of observing public, just few days ago another mysterious otabil tape has come out again, which was supposedly said to be a more recent preaching. In that too, Otabil had made made U turned that he believes in free edcucation but must be of quality, and therefore parents must not give birth to many children all because there is free education, with a hypocritical and demonstrable of double-standardness laughter at the background of the tape. (CitiFM 5/11/12).

But do you know what? My beef is not the NDC's politricks with the tape but this Mensa Otabil, how sometimes he allows his arrogance to blindfold him as to where the merciful God picked and made him who he is now, because that is the same he does among his pastors, arrogating certain powers to himself. Enjoying a fallacious infallibility and wiser than all in his church. He unfortunately forgets that the whole Ghana is not the same as his microcosm church where they all the time swallow his trash without a question or intellectual analysis. I am also at my wits end with amazement and wonder as to which academic institution taught Otabil that everything free is devoid of quality which he is pushing down our throat and the NDC buffooneries and idioglossias are also swallowing it as if suffering from political cognitive hallucination

As matter of fact, this Otabil should be the last person to talk against free education and first person to stand stalwart and champion the idea of free education, and stop hiding his personal interest and agenda of Central University behind so called quality. i will asked the NDC to keep on rummaging and trenchantly searching for more of Otabil's tapes, and they will realised that decades ago he claimed in his sympathetic preachings that he was born by an abjectly poor and squatting parents in Sekondi and grew as a wailling squalor in the slum and gutters of kanda in Accra. He believes that the God of all possibility is the one who has lifted him from the abbys of obscurity into a spiritual pinnacle and lighthouse of Leadership. But now Otabil says this God has lost that ability of yesterday and therefore he cant do it today, hence free education is a mirage and sisyphian effort.

Indeed, from horses own mouth, Otabil nearly dropped out of school due to the stench poverty of his parents. Had it not been the intervention of a good samaritan who freely helped him, Otabil might have been a kayoyie by now. In the light of this, nobody should have appreciated free education than him. But there is an akan saying that "Atse yie ma awerefir". To wit, a comfortable life makes one forget the past rags, tatters, trash and abject poverty he was once in. The most ridiculous, preposterous and farcical was otabil's assertion that anything free is devoid of quality. Then Ghana has a cheap president who enjoyed free education in the north and never paid fees. Otabil is suffering from analytical deficiency syndrome.

If according to Otabil's dictionary free means without quality and cheap, then he himself needs critical and crucial self-examination of a myraid and plethoria of of kindness he had received from people from his teens todate in order to revise his notes and his preaching that some of his contentions are not only a mere meeky mouse and cheap rhetorics but also to say the least, never make sense all. To begin with, Otabil's own life, in his teens, a good samaritan had to miraclously come to his rescue and paid his fees for him free in order to write his O'Level. So his education was free and cheap.When Otabil married, as his church was then coming up and he did not have the life's basics but his church blessed him with a lot of things free, as a young man to begin life with. Could we quote from Otabil's dictionary that they were cheap?

The first new car Otabil used was Mercides Benz, it was bought as a surprise gift for him by his church. It was free so no quality and cheap?. Otabil is born again christian with free gift of Holy spirit in him. He never worked for it and never paid for it. So its of no quality and cheap?. As Otabil's church was making giant strides in its early stages, he had an opportunity to visit abroad with his wife and the church shouldered the plane-ticket of his wife free of charge. Could that be cheap and of no quality? Otabil has four children, and the goodbook says children are gift from God. So could we deduce from Otabil's empty and mini-mouse philosophy that because he never paid God for the childen they are cheap?. Mensa Otabil has been blessed with two honorary doctrate degrees of humanity and divinity in 1988/89. And we are pretty aware of the fact that this is given as an honour for one's sublime contribution in life and not like those of formal studies by burning the midnight oil coupled with the herculian task of writing longitudinal dessertation. So Otabil degrees were free. Therefore, could we step on innocent toes by quoting from Otabil's own books that its of no quality and cheap?

At Otabil's church like other churches, no one stands at the gate and issue ticket as payment before entry like is done at cinema halls and sports stadia, so its free and that makes his church devoid of quality and therefore cheap. The offerings and monthly first fruits which have enable him to become spiritual leader cum Rich Onasis, to build those magnificent edifices and the exhorbitant fee-payment Central University, were received freely from the members without any corresponding work from Otabil, so its cheap and fraudulent. Broad daylight robbery according to Otabil's contention that free means cheap. Otabil should check he own bible and he will realised that Jesus said, you have recieved freely so give it freely. Does that mean Jesus Christ was painting a picture that christianity is of no quality and cheap? I suppose by virtue of Otabil's riches, now he has been of a blessing in the area of gifts or even paid someone's fees for him before. Did the person asked him of the quality of that gift before receiving from him, because it was free? Otabil's argument was a sheer sophistry.

Worst still, another laughable and ridiculous arguement from a spiritual kingpin and central church tin-god like Otabil was that if the parents dont pay for the fees, their children may grow up and not respecting the parents. When I heard this I shuddered, was it from Otabil's mouth? What did he take his listeners for? Unlettered gargantuan dimwits? Then the best thing for us to do is to verify any credibility in this demagogueous parochial minded outburst of Otabil, from President Mahama and Dr.Mahamudu Bawumia as well as other notherners who innocently enjoyed the free education at the top there, that how many of them are disobediently chasing their parents with cutlass for innocently accepting the free education and not paying the childens' fees. Its an unfortunate statement, if not balderdash

Furthermore, also on the tape, Otabil said that because the free education is going to be paid by the parents taxes its not free.Well that was another weak statement which never resonat any intellectual discourse. My question here is which governmental project promised by the politicians are paid from their pockets. As a matter of fact, when those aspirants go out and promise roads,bridges, stadia, houses etc., they use a phrase like "we shall build this and build that", are they not from the national cake which is already for all of us, be it a loan from outside, taxes, from other natural resources? Otabil should travel to some of European countries, particularly, the scandinavian countries. There is a quality free education not only at their SHS but from primary to university for all citizens. And no person is making a desperate suggestion that because its from the peoples' taxes it ceases to be free.

Infact it was for all foreigners previously but to discourage too much influx of students from outside that is why now foreigners pay fees. And its even an understatement to use just the word quality, its a super-duper quality and as a citizen its too much easier to get job to do vis-avis as a student too. So Otabil should give us a break with all these ugly noises as if he is the wisest person in the world. He should bear in mind that free education is a politician's vision and political trumpcard for a party, and as much as nobody poured cold water on Otabil's vision and now he has admittedly been a blessing to many, he should not turn around from what people enamored him as an inspirational preacher and all of a sudden become an impossibility preacher and pessimisst propagandist.

In conclusion, but you have to be smart to understand where Otabil is mischievously and surreptitiously coming from. He has opened Central university where students pay excruciating and bone-breaking fees, so how do you expect him to join the bandwagon of free education believers. Obviously his mind has become money, money, money like a mammon. Otabil also said that parents have to be paid well so that they can pay their wards fees. That is hypocrisy. Otabil should first ask himself does he pays all his pastors well? His bible says you remove the timber on your eyes before complaining about the speck in another's. Those pastors he has thrown into villages and cottages like a guinea pig to experiment his village churches and like a disposable napkins to get rid of them at a least divergent views, does he pay them well? Otabil should put his house in order first before talking about the politicians.

It should also be borne in mind that, there is no research or findings to establish the fact the good schools and heavy payments of fees alone( I repeat alone) guarantees a student automatically the best of future life. Dont we have people who went to great schools with heavy payments and some are well positioned in life and some are not? In much the same way that some people also went to less fancy schools with less payments and could be found in the corridors of the great ones, likewise some of such people are also nothing to write home about. So its not automatic. but its an incontrovertible fact, that more often than not, the charity, civility, awareness of the importance of the school the child is going to his future life and above all the fear of God, that he receives at home plays a crucial role in that child's life. Here even Mensa Otabil's own life is an undenyable attestation and testimony to this fact. Not born with silver spoon in his mouth and not the best of schools, but rising to such a sublime accomplished figure, speaks volumes of the fact that its not automatically the big schools and heavy payments. Otabil himself had spoken a lot of how the mother inculcated the fear of God into him when he was a child. Charity, they say begins at home and not at school.

EKUN WALLIS
THE TRUMPET OF CONSCIENCE