Akufo-Addo’s Savvy Decision on KNUST

The decision by President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to have academic activities return to normalcy within two weeks at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) is the best of its kind to be made by any democratically elected Ghanaian leader on record. It is the sort of progressive and civilized leadership conduct that Ghanaians have been sorely lacking for as long as any mature adult-Ghanaian citizen upwards of 50 years old can remember (See “KNUST Council, VC Sacked; 7 Member IMC in Place” DailyGuideAfrica.com / Ghanaweb.com 10/26/18).

About the only qualm that I have with the rationale or thinking behind the decision is in regard to the implication that prolonging the suspension of academic activities at KNUST or its protracted and indefinite closure could have on the image of this remarkable regional institution and the nation at large. On the latter score, I think the President and his Administration, at large, ought to have focused more on the deleterious impact that the prolonged closure of our tertiary academies have had on the quality of higher learning in the country in the past and the global recognition and acceptance of degrees and diplomas awarded by the country’s public academies as a result, and not merely because a remarkable percentage of international students are enrolled at KNUST.

On the question of the indefinite closure of our universities and colleges, former President Jerry John Rawlings has been most guilty. In the case of the career military strongman and junta leader, the motive was always one of abject callousness and plain selfishness. For, as I have countlessly observed in previous columns on this subject, then-Chairman Rawlings did not hesitate upon the least perceived provocation on the part of our university and college students to promptly, cavalierly and summarily close down our tertiary academies, even as he quietly shipped all his four known children abroad for schooling. This is precisely what makes Nana Akufo-Addo’s decision to have KNUST reopen as soon as practically conductive the most civilized and progressive decision of its kind.

You see, it is such erratic and grossly misguided education policy as doggedly pursued by the Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta that drastically depreciated the quality of public education in the country, from whose deleterious effects Ghanaians have yet to recover. What is also significant for the members of the just-instituted Interim-Management Committee (IMC) of KNUST to do, is to ensure that not only are students found to have savagely vandalized that institution’s taxpayer-underwritten property during the course of last week’s violent protest demonstrations made to promptly pay for the same, those who are found to have been in criminal breach of University policies must be promptly expelled and possibly made to face and dance to the morally chastening music of our judicial system.

Each and every college and university student who is 18 years of age or above is a full-fledged voting adult and must be held accountable for their conduct, positively or negatively. Which is also another reason why I was livid to read news reports claiming that some lecturers and professors on the KNUST campus had primitively and barbarically resorted to administering corporal punishment on some of their students. If Vice-Chancellor Kwasi Obiri-Danso was aware of this barbaric subculture at KNUST and permitted the same, then there can be no gainsaying the imperative need for the Chief Administrator of the nation’s second-most-prestigious academy to be promptly held accountable for such flagrant administrative malfeasance, including but not limited to his removal from office and possible judicial prosecution.

By extension, of course, any KNUST faculty member found to have engaged in administering corporal punishment to students must be promptly suspended, pending full investigations and possible dismissal. A civilized and morally progressive climate conducive to first-rate learning must be reestablished on the KNUST campus. This goes for all the other campuses of the country’s public tertiary academies.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
October 26, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]