Adisadel College closure: Final-year students to return but…

The Headmaster of the Adisadel College in Cape Coast, Mr. Herbert Graham says final-year students of the school would be asked to return next week, however the school in general remains closed down indefinitely.

He said a general breakdown of discipline and threat to security on campus informed the decision to close down the school.

The school closed down on Monday when students rampaged following the death on Sunday of Mater Mustapha Gafaru, a final year Science student who jumped to his death from the fourth floor of a new classroom block in an attempt to avoid a teacher seeking students who had refused to attend church service. Gafaru was a Moslem and has since been buried.

Mr. Graham who spoke on CITI FM's Breakfast Show, said the students refused to write their examinations, refused to go to the classrooms or take their meals at the dining hall and also rejected any cooperation with the school authorities, choosing rather to destroy the food served them.

He said he found the behaviour of the students rather strange since it was the first time such an unfortunate death occurred in the school and explained that in the immediate, he could not tell if it would lead to a review of punishment methods in the school.

“As at now I cannot say that. Definitely the incident that happened, it was such that the teacher who was going to the block to ensure that the doors were safe and that the doors had not been broken into hadn't gone there with the aim of punishing students but to make sure that those boys who had gone there had gone there by whatever means, he wanted to be sure about. So it wasn't a question of punishment because the teacher never saw the boy and the boy never saw the teacher and they were even far apart in the building.”

Following the death, there have been raging public debates over the propriety of faith-based educational institutions to subject all students to serve particular principles.

Mr. Graham said final-year students who refused to write their mock examinations in the wake of the confusion would be asked to return to school next week to write their examination and then continue to prepare for their final West African Senior Secondary School Examination while a decision would be taken on the rest of the students after a series of scheduled meetings.

Adisadel College has 1,232 student population and over 80 teachers and remains one of Ghana's highly regarded secondary schools and often a first choice for thousands seeking admission.

Author: Isaac Yeboah