When A Chief Comes Home With A Weird Haircut, Expect His Subjects To Follow Suit With Tokyojoo

Achimota School, as an entity, has a headmaster who is the CEO; Management and Board, just as any other Corporate Organisation. The GES is the umbrella body here.

By tenets of corporate governance, policy decisions emanates from the Board, to the CEO who then takes it to management to run the organisation. The umbrella body here is the appoiting authority which is the state and represented by the President.

The appointing authority appoints CEOs and the Board. But the power to fire CEOs lies in the bosom of Board and not appointing authority (government). Day-to-day decisions bordering on operations are the sole perrogative of the board members in consultation with the CEO.

It is not the responsibility of the appointing authority (government) to assume the posture of micromanaging the Organisation. It's role is purely advisory and not authoritative interventionism. This is why the president cannot fire a CEO he has appointed, unless upon advise and decision of the Board.

Now, linking this to the Achimota School and the boy with dreadlocks issue: the GES is the umbrella body (government) represented by the President. The headmaster is the CEO; a team of Masters, parents and other staff constitute the Board while the teaching and other administrative staff constitute the management.

So, a conflict arising out of admission of a student, is not even a board issue, let alone the appointing authority. It is purely within the bosom of management. And if it is not resolved, then it can be taken up the ladder which is the Board.

And when the Board affirms the decision of management through the CEO, then the option left for the boy with dreadlocks is the courts. The GES has absolutely no role to play in this matter, in respect of the tenets of good Corporate Governance practice.

The decision of GES to order Achimota School to admit the boy against the school's laiddown code of conduct, is, therefore, abnormal usurpation of power and vexatious undermining of authority of the school's governing structures.

Indeed, GES has capitulated under cacophonous social media frenzy, and thereby, has set a terrible precedence. It is a classical kneejerk reaction which, if not rescinded with utmost alacrity, will render well-established administrative structures of our second cycle institutions, in complete tatters.

Ghana is gradually drifting into a debilitating tailspin of social media mob rule, where authorities are vowed into total submission by loudmouths who, incidentally, often lack proper appreciation in respect of gravamen of issues on the table.

Plainfaced charlatans with loudest megaphones but chronically constipated on substance, are now dictating the pace and direction of public discourse, and that is a damn scary scenario for our country's socioeconomic advancement and general societal cohesiveness.

What the GES order has done is opening the floodgates to others with varied metaphysical beliefs and weird lifestyles to, equally, walk into campuses of our second cycle educational institutions to demand the rules and regulations be put aside so they can enjoy their freedoms.

Now, there is a Dagbani axiom that says "When the overlord of a Community comes home with a weird haircut, expect his subjects to follow suit with Tokyojoo". I'M DONE!!!

Newton-Offei Justice Abeeku

email: [email protected]