Naadu Mills Hands Over School Complex To Bornikope

An eleven-classroom block built through the initiative of the First Lady, Mrs Ernestina Naadu Mills, for Bornikope, a coastal community in the Dangbe East District of the Greater Accra Region, has been handed over to the chiefs and people of the area.

The school complex has two classrooms for early childhood development, six classrooms for the primary school and three for the junior high school (JHS).

Other facilities of the beautiful edifice are an assembly hall, a clinic, a computer laboratory, offices, a staff common room and a water system. A football park with a tracking field is to be constructed later.

The project, which was initiated by Mrs Mills's community based organisation, Foundation for Child Education (FCE), forms part of her vision to bring quality education to children in deprived communities.

Speaking at a durbar of chiefs and people of Bornikope to mark the official handover of the facility, Mrs Mills said children should not be denied the right to education as a result of the poor conditions in which they lived.

She said Ghana's education was faced with such fundamental problems as inadequate infrastructure, poor educational resources in rural communities and weak institutional arrangement for supervision and monitoring of quality of teaching.

The results, according to Mrs Mills, included poor access, poor attendance, falling standards, poor performance, high dropout rate and a reinforced inter-generational poverty.

Mrs Mills, therefore, stressed the need for a strong commitment by all citizens towards ensuring a strong educational system, noting that it was a requirement for the attainment of the Millennium Development Goal 2, which seeks to attain universal education by 2015.

She expressed appreciation to all individuals and corporate bodies who had contributed to the establishment of the structure.

President John Evans Atta Mills, who was a special guest of honour, said his administration was willing to partner all individuals and groups who were willing to help with the provision of such structures to augment the government's effort to make quality education accessible to all Ghanaians irrespective of which part of the country they lived in.

He expressed admiration for his wife’s unflinching commitment to seeing the facility completed and recounted amid humour an occasion when Mrs Mills had to empty her bank account to finance the project.

President Mills called on the community to maintain the facility to sustain it.

A spokesperson for the Paramount Chief of Ada, Nene Tsatsu Pediator, said the First Lady had demonstrated exemplary leadership from the level of commitment she had shown in seeing to the completion of the school.

He called for sustainable measures to be put in place to ensure that the facility became a model centre of learning in the district.

On behalf of the traditional council, Nene Pediator expressed gratitude to the First Lady and the Foundation for Child Education, Ghana for choosing the Bornikope community for the project.

A colourful ceremony was also held to enstool Mrs Naadu Mills as the development queen of the Ada Traditional Area under the stool name Naana Naadu Dede Okoyo I.

The occasion brought together a host of personalities, including the Chairman of the Presidential Economic Advisory Team, Dr Cadman Mills, the Greater Accra Regional Minister, Nii Armah Ashietey, the Member of Parliament for Sege, Mr Alfred Abayateye, and the District Chief Executive for the Dangme East, Rex Daniel.