Retired diplomat and former Secretary to Ghana’s First President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, K.B Asante says the biggest problems Ghana faces after 57 years of independence are ‘’illiteracy and impoverishment’’.
“I think we have too many illiterate people in the population and we have too many impoverish citizens and this is unacceptable,’’ he said.
According to him Ghana needs an honest assessment and appraisal of our achievements 57 years after independence. He described Ghana as a nation endowed with lots of natural resources and capable human resource and brain power.
“Ghana is a state endowed with good raw materials and a people are fairly good in many respect [brain power] and so we should have done better in education so that we don’t have so much poverty,’’ Mr Asante noted.
He said Ghana’s population have increased but the people not very well educated. “The point is many of are not very well educated, they don’t understand what is happening; education is not as deep as it should be and I think we should look into that.’’
Mr Asante further stated that free education is not the answer to Ghana’s current challenges. “ I do not think that free education is the answer, I think our education, the practice, our supervision should improve, little things like that,’’ he opined.
“I do not think that at the moment free education is the answer, although state should endeavour to ensure that everybody is educated to the best of his/her ability, but in our present circumstance its difficult in my opinion for the government to dish out more money for education…’’
However, he said Ghana has not failed entirely in achieving the vision and dreams of the founding fathers.
“We are still a nation; we are together, other countries have passed through terrible situations. We over the past 57 years have had our ups and downs and those episodes should teach us what we should do in the future, the important thing is to find out why we have failed in certain respects and what we should do not to repeat the failures,’’ he cautioned.
By: Evans Effah/citifmonline.com/Ghana