Sammy Gyamfi’s Junk Statistics – Part 2

You see, the cheap strategy of any cynical political operative is to hide behind bogus and fuzzy statistics, such as Mr. Samuel “Sammy” Gyamfi, the so-called National Communications Officer – call him Mr. Squealer of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” – of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) sought to do the other day, when he told Ghanaians that under the tenure of Prof. Naana Opoku-Agyemang, as Education Minister, “five million pieces of chalk, comprising 4,994,328 boxes of white chalk and 180, 000 boxes of colored chalk were provided to schools across the country (See “It’s the Right Time to Have a Female Vice-President – Mahama” ClassFM.com / Ghanaweb.com 7/9/20).

Now, traditionally, every single box of chalk contains 10 pieces or fingers of chalk inside of it. So 4, 994, 328 boxes of white chalk by simple Arithmetic, contains 49, 943, 280 pieces of chalk, that is, forty-nine million, nine-hundred-and-forty-three and two-hundred-and-eighty pieces of chalk, and not five million pieces of chalk, as Mr. Gyamfi reportedly claims. As well 180, 000 boxes of colored chalk equal 1, 800, 000, that is, one-million and eight-hundred-thousand pieces of chalk. Now, this is inescapably absurd because Mr. Gyamfi does not explain how it came about that the Headteacher of the Akyem-Kukurantumi Presbyterian Primary School bitterly complained to Mrs. Matilda Amissah-Arthur, wife of then-Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, when Mr. Mahama was Ghana’s President, that her school was in woefully short supply of writing chalk.

Of course, we all vividly recall the sort of arrogant response, typical of the leaders of the National Democratic Congress, that Mrs. Amissah-Arthur volleyed at Mrs. Juliet Oppong, the Kukurantumi Presbyterian Primary School’s Headteacher. What we are clearly trying to demonstrate here is the fact that the preceding figures that have been cheaply rattled out by Mr. Gyamfi, the NDC’s National Communications Officer, scandalously begs the question of whether under the indisputably unremarkable tenure of Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, as the Mahama-appointed Education Minister, our basic and high schools were adequately supplied with the requisite teaching and learning materials. And, of course, the one truthfully correct answer, as Ghanaians are wont to say, is “Absolutely Not!”

We also have to factor in the fact that the period in discussion was well before the auspicious and visionary implementation of the fee-free Senior High School policy initiative by President Akufo-Addo, which saw the additional enrollment of some 200,000 to 300,000 Senior High School students who would otherwise not have been able to attend or would have completely lost the prime opportunity of their lifetime to be adequately prepared for economically successful academic and professional livelihoods. In other words, to make a meaningful sense out of the “Junk Statistics” thrown into the fray by Mr. Gyamfi, one needs to know precisely the number of schools, pupils and students among which/whom these five-million pieces of chalk were distributed, when and how. We need to also bear in mind that four years prior to Naana Opoku-Agyemang’s appointment by the then-President Mahama as Education Minister, it was the National Democratic Congress-sponsored government of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills that had been literally running the show.

So, it goes without saying that whatever kinks or deficiencies existed in the logistical or supply system of our state- and publicly run schools were the veritable creation of the Mills-Mahama government. Unless, of course, the NDC’s National Communications Officer could also clearly and amply demonstrate that the previous John Agyekum-Kufuor government of the New Patriotic Party had been derelict or relatively significantly underfunded our public-school system. The reality, of course, is diametrically the opposite. In other words, per headcount, the Kufuor government funded the country’s public-school system in a way that veritable “Junk Statisticians” like Mr. Gyamfi would have an extremely difficult time reckoning or calculating.

Mr. Gyamfi also pontifically claims that under the Mahama regime and Naana Opoku-Agyemang’s tenure as Education Minister, the textbook ratio was drastically reduced from “4 students sharing one textbook to one student having three textbooks.” Now, what Comrade Squealer has conveniently omitted from his propaganda spiel is the fact that on average, elementary and high school pupils and students are taught in six subject areas or courses per day. Very likely seven or eight courses, as routinely prevailed in my time. Even more significantly but, nevertheless, all to be expected, Mr. Gyamfi has conveniently and deviously neglected to point out the fact that under the unprecedently inclusive Akufo-Addo Administration, every student is fully supplied with all the textbooks, at least six, that they need to be responsibly and successfully educated.

And the foregoing is only just one of the legion differences in the quality of governance and leadership between President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Candidate John Dramani Mahama, the former President who has been desperately trying to fight off the One-Million Ghanaian voters who resoundingly expelled him from Jubilee House in December 2016 and are highly likely to repeat the same savvy gesture in December 2020.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

July 12, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]