Wonder Akpesse, NDC Hiking Of NSS Monthly Allowance Was Politically Motivated

Following the publication of my article titled “NSS Hike Signer Must Appear Before Parliament,” somebody by the name of Wonder Akpesse – I am assuming the letter writer is a man – wrote yours truly accusing him of dealing with the matter in an unsavorily, politically colored lenses. That may very well appear to be the case, unless the critic is also objective enough to carefully and critically take into account both the timing and the circumstances under which the 60-percent increment of the National Service Allowance was made.

Mr. Akpesse claims that here in the United States, internship allowance is $600. Now, I have absolutely no way of knowing or ascertaining the veracity of the latter figure, because most of my students who underwent internship programs in the past, presently called Service Learning, did it for free, without the payment of any allowances. The routine and general understanding here was that the intern stood to gain valuable professional experience that might look good, and even fetching, on one’s résumé, especially when it came to applying for a job or other academic and professional opportunities in the near future.

In my case, when I served as a journalist-intern at the New York Amsterdam News, as a copy editor and a general assignment reporter in 1987, or thereabouts, I only received academic credits towards my graduation. None of my classmates, some of whom interned with CBS-News, per courtesy of Professor Michael Keating, a former CBS-TV News Director, was known to have been paid for their internship. Those who got paid working with quite reputable newspapers like the Village Voice and New York Newsday were paid a nominal “gratuity” only at the end of their internships, if I remember accurately. I had been denied the same opportunity because I had spoken out against some cartographical poppycock that Professor Keating cavalierly presumed to be representative of the “Real Africa,” which had the Republic of South Africa and the entire North-African Region marked off as “White Africa.” Professor Keating would let it be known to me, in case I had forgotten, that at the end of the semester he would be the one putting in the final grades. Well, I instantly got the message.

What I had highlighted in the article at issue that appears to have provoked the great interest of Mr. Akpesse is the fact that throughout its 4-year tenure, the National Service Scheme’s operatives of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) do not seem to have recognized the woeful inadequacy of a service allowance of GH₵ 350 per month, until well after the NDC had been voted out of power, else the Mahama regime’s operatives would not have waited until a couple of days before their official exit before signing off on a document authorizing the raising of the National Service Monthly Allowance by an unprecedented 60-percent.

In other words, were these NDC operatives, by such a whopping allowance increment implying that it was nigh time to double the operating budget of the NSS because the Mahama government no longer had to worry about where to find the money to pay the allowances of the National Service Personnel? Or was it just that the country’s economy had been so miraculously boosted as to warrant such a humongous increment? We, of course, have to put such an anomalous increment within the context of the summary withdrawal of the age-old allowances paid Nurse-Trainees and Teacher-Trainees.

Then also, as the cliché goes, comparing internship allowances between Ghanaian students and their American counterparts is like comparing apples and oranges. Both are fruits all right, but they are not of the same species, nevertheless. Which, of course, is another longwinded way of saying that the living standards of both countries are not very similar.

Mr. Akpesse, it would have been far better news if, for example, the 60-percent NSS hike had taken effect under the tenure of President Mahama in 2015 or early 2016, and not barely 72 hours before Mr. Mahama left the Flagstaff House. Coming the way it did, it looked more as if President Mahama wanted to punish then-President-Elect Akufo-Addo for decisively trouncing the former in the December 2016 Presidential Election. The timing of the NSS allowance increment reeked more of a scorched-earth warring gambit than a well-considered and a well-meaning policy initiative.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
February 25, 2017
E-mail: [email protected]