You Think Illiteracy Is A Problem In Ghana?

I checked Ghana's 2010 Population Census Report and immediately became scared after learning that consistently, more and more Ghanaians are becoming literates. The literacy rate as at 2010 was 71.5% of the population, in 2000 it was 54.1%.

My fear was further exacerbated upon remembering that President Mahama during the 2012 electioneering campaign promised to build 200 Community Day Secondary Schools and has also recently hinted that willy-nilly, Free SHS is coming in 2015. My prayer is that all these promises should pass over the head of Ghana the same way the One Time NHIS Premium and STX Housing promises did.

But it seems I cannot easily pray away this literacy monster because public universities across the country agreed to and did increase their student intake for the 2013/2014 academic year. As the Deputy Minister of Information, Murtala Mohammed briefed the media on 2nd August, 2013, University of Ghana agreed to increase its enrolment by 15%, KNUST 25 to 35%, The University of Education, Winneba 40 to 60% and University of Mines, Tarkwa 15%. UDS, the two new Universities and the privates all increased their enrolments by significant margins.

Indeed, the quest for higher learning is reverberating at all corners of Ghana and even poor people like myself are struggling elsewhere doing advanced studies. Even if President Mahama does not bring FREE SHS in 2015, it seems its possibility of coming is still high because Mr. Akufo Addo too has a high chance of becoming the President in 2016 and it seems his Free SHS Dream is not dead yet. I am therefore very scared because whether I like it or yes, more Ghanaians are going to become educated in the years to come.

I know you are shocked and will have kicked me in the balls if I were to be standing before you given how beneficial people like Bill Gate has become to their countries because of education and even looking at how Ghanaians like Professors Frempong Boateng, Allotey, Stephen Addai and Opanin Agyekum, Mr. Martin Amidu, Pastor Mensah Otabil and even young ones like Bright Simmons, Anas Armeyaw Anas and the Boy from Bongo, Manasseh Azure have used and are using their education in Ghana. But please read my reasons before you quote for me my stupidity.

The last time I checked, the guys who are taking GH 1500 and those sleeping with helpless unemployed ladies before releasing to them their deserving appointment letters to serve their own country at the District Assemblies, Ministries, Police Service, CEPS and the other sectors of the country were all not illiterates, they were 'educated' Ghanaians.

Talk of the engineers, city planners and all those guys who supervised and superintended over the use of (in the words of Ghana Institute of Engineers) 'VERY WEAK MATERIALS' to build Melcom Achimota which collapsed and killed 14 Ghanaians and left 68 others with unrecoverable injuries. Are they illiterates? No! They as literate as President Mahama who with Oko Vanderpuje, the AMA Boss made that two-years-old-yet-to-be-fulfilled-promise that'WHOEVER [WAS] RESPONSIBLE FOR [THE] NEGLIGENCE WILL PAY A PRICE'.President Mahama read History at the University of Ghana and Social Psychology in Russia; Oko Vanderpuje too is a PHD holder!

Now, how about the Doctors, Midwives, Nurses and Management of Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital who supervised the delivery and eventual miraculous varnish of Suwaiba's yet to be found 'dead' son? They all went to school just as Madam Sherry Aryittey, the former Health Minister who after all these years of fighting for women's empowerment and inclusion in political leadership, thought that the best thing her Ministry could do was to rather negotiate and pay/compensate Suwaiba and her family for them to forget about the baby also did.

How are illiterate 'kayayes', never-been-to-school-before-trotro mates and dog chains sellers' impediments to Ghana's development given that they are not the State Ministers and Attorneys who in cahoots with other wicked public servants and private Ghanaians created, looted and shared gargantuan amounts of cedis and covered them as judgment debts?

The GYEEDA, SUBAH and SADA chop chop, who are responsible? Illiterates? Has any illiterate Ghanaian ever been cited for financial malfeasance and misfeasance in the Public Accounts Committee and the Auditor General's Reports before? I do not want to believe that the learned lawyers at the Attorney General's Office who should mount the prosecution of these people and have not done it are any less literate.

You sit in judgment of these two groups of people - the street women at Walewale who have never stepped in a classroom before and cannot read nor write and the educated ones who have messed up the benign SADA Project - those who planted the trees that never germinated; reared fowls whose eggs never hatched them, paid 'SALARIES' as consultation fees and their loudmouth friends in authority who are but with no shred of shame defending and justifying these wicked acts and are as well doing all that is dubiously possible to get them escape justice and accountability - which of the groups is responsible for the acute poverty situation in Northern Ghana?

Those guys at DVLA issuing 'murdering' license to unqualified drivers irresponsibly and unconscionably, the Customs Excise & Preventive Service guys at the Tema Port who are maliciously looting and milking Ghana dry uncovered by Anas, are they illiterates? The Engineers, Administrators and City Planners of AMA and Environmental Protection Agency who despite the fat salaries and envious powers given to them to prevent but have supervised Accra to be 'planned'? in such a manner that in every rainfall year, flood kills people and destroy properties are all educated if I should remind you.

God has blessed me with three 'Mothers' in my life - Christiana Adomako, my biological mother, Akosua Serwaa, her younger sister and Abena Nsiah, curtain dealer and owner of Abena Nsiah Enterprise, Adum-Kumasi. They are all 'uneducated' but they pay their taxes, they are not parties to the drug cartels in Ghana, they have no hands in the underhand dealings that go on at the Passport Office nor malicious journalism in Ghana, they are not the heads of the Energy Ministry nor the Engineers at VRA, ECG and GRIDCO who are spoiling your gadgets with Dums) Dums). So how are you able to RIGHTLY blame illiterate Ghanaians for being part of Ghana's problems?

You may now cast your mind wide for any of the things you feel is the cause of Ghana's underdevelopment and ask yourself if the illiterates are responsible for that. If education is the key to development as the noise goes, then elites in Ghana should go and get the key from the illiterates and head to the door!

FESTIVAL GODWIN BOATENG
A 'literate' Ghanaian
Note: The names and incidents mentioned herein are only for symbolic and sarcastic effects.