Honestly I have in recent times been wondering what the next eight years will look like, still living in Ghana. Our election DNA seem to have been fixed on eight years cycle, fairly predictable, but dangerously detrimental to our security, and our governance.

After President Nana Akufo-Addo’s winning, politicians could conveniently predict another regime in the next eight years, and so could afford to plunder the resources for themselves, in anticipation that they will lose power anyway, whether they do the right things or the wrong things, the electorates will shout, change!

I recall the carnage the Azorka boys brought to bear in the year 2009 when the NDC won power; that was when the history of the seizures of government installations began, as I recall. Kwami Sefa Kayi once interviewed one NDC activist, about their violent behaviors, in the aftermath of the 2008 elections. This party activist, one Nana Ofori-Atta, who is now late, boasted that if he was dared, he and his group were going to burn down the offices of the NHIS; that was the audacity of winning power.

The aftermath of the 2008 election violence included the killing of some individuals at Agbogbloshie, the hijacking of the bidding processes at the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly, the seizures of toilet facilities and tollbooths across the country, and the creation of sharp teeth; these all began the processes of losing the election from the beginning; it was all about power, impunity, and brute force, and the electorates understood what the NDC government was asking for, bringing the elephant back from the bush.

I still don’t know why the NDC is spending so much money looking for why they lost power. This fact finding committee to unravel the cause of their defeat in the face of the obvious is another scam flying in our face. Why do you go round looking for how a thief looks like, when you, yourself, are an example of a thief? Allotey Jacobs says he has something in his chest; why don’t you just cut that chest open, and remove whatever is stored there, right there will be the reasons you lost power, not simple?

In the last few weeks, the NDC has been confronted with some naked realities, accusations and reverse accusations. I have observed the scene with keen interest, and I have tried to analyze how they planned their defeat. Of course it began with the seizures as described above, traveling through dzi wo fie asem, to the emergence of sharp teeths, turning through the flooding of V8s, moving a step towards yentie obiaa, from which it made a few stops at Woyome, Montie, thereafter it became free for all; the amassing of wealth, the open display of opulence, and the legitimization of insults and theft, inch by inch, the NDC crumbled into a comfortable lead, and eventually, it all came down, they got what they wanted.

The party has seen some turbulence in the last few weeks. This turbulence started with FONKAR GAMES, when Nana Konadu started to demand the return of her husband’s party, threatening to take the umbrella away, with Kofi Adams nearly at the throat of the late President Atta Mills. The FONKAR GAMES ended with their 97:3 delegate conference in Kumasi, after which the death of President Atta Mills brought some sense of oneness back into the party, at least on the surface.

Just at once, Kofi Adams, a foundation member of FONKAR, transformed from being President Mill’s perceived traitor, to becoming the darling boy of the John Mahama’s administration. He was reported as having had his campaign financed by the then President, John Mahama, to contest Yaw Boateng Gyan. After winning, he was all of a sudden everything, a member of the Board of Directors of this, a member of the Board of Directors of that, the National Organizer of this, the National Coordinator of that, and Adams found himself being surrounded by V8s, one for the market, the other for the streets, all these being done not only to desecrate the memory of the late Atta Mills, but also to the disenchantment of the party grass root people who suffered to keep the party in power while Kofi Adams followed FONKAR.

While all these were happening, and young boys and girls were grabbing monies, the NPP concentrated on in-fighting at the top level. The NDC lived in the hope that the in-fighting and the divisions of the NPP at the top level would have trickle down to their grass root, and therefore automatically translate into an electoral fortune for them.

No, that did not happen. The wrongs of the NDC government, and the determination of the NPP’s invisibles, coupled with an angry public, gave the NDC a well-deserved and unprecedented defeat.

Despite all of these, the NPP has succeeded in doing one thing right; the NPP has succeeded in failing to learn any lessons from the defeat of the NDC. They took advantage of the general failings of the NDC, gave some sumptuous promises, including promising jobs for unemployable heavily built boys, jobs that they do not have the skills for. They created Invisible Forces, they created Delta Forces, and all kinds of forces, across the country, giving them hope, for jobs they are not qualified for.

The NPP finally won power, and then they began to fall on their own daggers. The traps they set for themselves began to trap them. Delta this, invisible that, all began to ask for their jobs, some members began to ask to be posted into the position of the IGP, and so on.

Of course it is not fair to watch people who did nothing for the party, now enjoying the leftover V8s. I am told Kan-Dapaah, and many others like him, refused to help the party while they were in opposition, claiming that he was on political retirement. In the absence of people like Kan-Dapaah helping, it was these same invisibles, and Deltas, who secured victory for the party. They did that in the hopes that when the party comes to power, they will have jobs, and they will begin to reap from their efforts.

I have already condemned the actions of the invisible and delta forces, but it appears they have a point, although they are using a wrong approach? After the party won power, Kan-Dapaah was called from his alleged political retirement, and made the National Security Minister, and then he began to, according to my information, recruit his own likeness, of people who went on political retirement, into the very positions that these forces had hoped to occupy; monkey dey chop, right?

So in the end the invisibles worked for nothing; they see, on our streets, party aliens sweeping gutters, gathering rubbish back into the gutters, they see on daily basis, 62 year olds wearing the National Youth Employment aprons, representing the youth, pretending to be youth, and pretending to be sweeping our pavements, and gathering the rubbish back into our gutters so as to have continuous work the next day.

You think they are, taflatse, fools? They are not! They are invisible, they were raised in the Delta, so they begin to unleash their character, and you say what? You, say fi, you will see what becomes of your jaws.

And that began the chipping away of the victory that was won recently. Power, arrogance, and power, those who won it gave it to the president, the president then gave it to those who abandoned the party, and those who abandoned the party do not know what to do with their undeserved positions, so they begin to lose it back to those who lost it, and the cycle continued, eight predictable years of poverty, eight predictable years of corruption, and eight predictable years of power coming back, NDC, NPP, NDC, NPP, Ghana’s hall of pain, all recycled…

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By: James Kofi Annan

The post How to lose an election in Ghana; the invisible way [Article] appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

I also did mention that in an ideal situation, there should have been a desk in the office of the Electoral Commission that helps Presidential candidates with the submission of their forms.

The High Court of Ghana has almost entirely agreed with me, and pronounced Judgment for the PPP, and Papa Kwesi Nduom. This is a good news, not only for Papa Kwesi Nduom, but for our country as well.

We cannot have a situation where the outcome of our elections will be predetermined by saboteurs of opposing parties, and I believe that even after this verdict somebody needs to further test the law, to know if it is right for a party to necessarily be disqualified because one endorsee endorsed for two nominees or one person endorsed for more than one political party.

In my view, if such a law is left on our statute books, then the chances will be that opposing political parties will in future plant moles in the camp of their opponents just with the intention of sabotaging them, and this could potentially plunge the country into conflict.

I think that the judge’s opinion on Kwesi Nduom’s case is one of the brilliant judgments I have read in a long while, especially considering the short spate of time available to the judge, and I honestly wish that such a judge was a member of our Parliament.

The quality of his analysis, the meticulous attention to detail, the breadth of research brought to bear on the judgment, this is exactly what, I believe, Ghana’s constitution envisaged for members of our Parliament.

Honestly Simpa Panyin has not been impressed with the performance of Ghana’s Parliament in recent years, both in terms of the quality of work, and how Ghana’s Executive seem to have whipped them so much in line, so much so that our Parliament seem to have seized to be as independent as the 1992 constitution envisaged.

Last Week Hackman Owusu Agyemang, a former member of Parliament, said that Ghana’s Parliament is not Independent. He was commenting on the surprise confirmation of the nominated Deputy Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Oti Bless. He felt that the processes that led to the confirmation of the nominee lacked transparency. Oti Bless is a member of Parliament, and he is reported to have maligned the Supreme Court a few months back.

I agree with Hackman. I have been of the opinion that our Parliament is so weak and polarized that the Executive will likely prevail upon the house in nearly everything they took to them, and so I was not surprised whenHackman Owusu Agyemang suspected that Parliament went ahead to confirm the Deputy Minister, even though, in his opinion, the house might have lacked quorum.

A weak Parliament is likely to be either as a symptom of the lack of logistics or a symptom of a poorly performing members of Parliament or both. It appears to me that in our case there are several members of Parliament who do not even understand the role of Parliament, and their own roles as Parliamentarians. They go to Parliament behaving as though they are Ministers and District Chief Executives, pre-occupied with what they can do, in terms of development in their constituencies, in order for their constituents to re-elect them in the next Parliament.

Currently party affiliation seems to be the dominant channel to enter Ghana’s Parliament. Party activism is about loyalty, it is about commitment, and about dedication. And with the keenness in our elections, activists have stepped up their game of winning the war of words, and the war of brut. There are those who seem to be competing for the most violent persons in their parties, and such persons are rewarded in many ways.

A couple of weeks ago Kennedy Agyapong was quoted as having said that he would be surprised if Nana Akufo Addo did not appoint Anthony Abayifa Karbo as a Minister if he wins power. His reason is that Anthony Karbo has been so hard working and so loyal to the party, so much so that he deserved an appointment.

I am not by this impugning that Anthony Karbo is violent. And of course they have to win power first, before there could be that possibility of Anthony Karbo qualifying for the kind of appointment Ken is alluding to.

But we know that those who are most active in our political parties may not necessarily be the most sensible or intelligent. In fact the most intelligent, the most sensible of people, the people who pay the most attention to detail, may not be the ones that will be violent, they are not the ones who will employ inferior tactics to win elections, and they may not be the ones who will be at the forefront of the party.

Going to Parliament has now fallen into the category of brut, violent processes, and as I have said in the past, this violent approach is virtually eliminating most decent people from wanting to offer themselves for elections. This is how we are selecting individuals we will thereafter call honorables, men and women whose simple duty will be to discuss and pass laws, approve agreements, approve ministers, and debate policies.

The perception out there is that the caliber of individuals being elected into Ghana’s Parliament lack the capacity to effectively carry out the responsibilities of being parliamentarian; that our Parliament is susceptible to the dictates of the Executive, so much so that majority of discerning Ghanaians are unable to trust the house to serve as vanguard for the integrity of the laws they make, especially with regards to the approval of government nominees, and major international agreements.

In my opinion the most deserving persons to be in our Parliament should be the most intellectually stimulating individuals, individuals with inquisitorial minds, people who have the penchant for objective critiquing of policy documents, people with meticulous attention to detail, those are the people who we must allow to enter our Legislature.

And here I am not talking about educational backgrounds. I have said it several times in my previous articles that there are so many people with degrees, including some PhDs, who are unable to express deep thoughts. There are so many unemployable graduates out there, some of whom might unfortunately have found Parliament as an easy and cheap route to be employed, by means of being Members of Parliament.

I am not talking about people who pride themselves in the amount of money they made while in Parliament, or the number of development projects they brought to their communities while representing them. That is not the essence of Parliament. And the fact that many Parliamentarians think that they hold the responsibility to bring development to their constituencies is a reflection of how weak our Parliament has grown to become.

I am talking about people who are good readers of documents, no matter how technical it may seem, people who are able to read meaning into policies, and how it impacts on society. I am talking about people who can apply sizeable understanding into issues, apply their knowledge and skills, no matter the field, to bear on our governance, and pride themselves in the good contribution they made in Parliament, and not the amount of money they made when they were in Parliament.

Ideally, and with all the short-comings of our election processes and choices as cited above, we should have had a certain flexible room to appoint additional minds into our Legislature. I am talking about making room for people such as Edward Omane Boamah, Papa Kwesi Nduom, Ekow Spio Garbrah, Tsatsu Tsikata, Dr. Muhamudu Bawumia, Samia Nkrumah and Kweku Baako Jr, to be appointed as members of Parliament.

These are people who are highly qualified, and self-achieving with deep thinking, but who for some reasons are unable to contest or win power to go to Parliament by themselves, either because of the way we have created our election processes, or because they are avers to putting themselves up for elections.

Let’s face it, we don’t have the best we should have in our Parliament, and therefore we are not getting the best out of our Parliament. And because we don’t have the best we should have in our Parliament, we are also not getting the best we should have from our government. In simple terms, it is the poor choices we make that results in the poverty of governance we receive.

This calls for reflective voting this December. We cannot continue to be carried away by emotional democracy. We cannot continue to vote for symbols. Our votes must count towards the building of our nationhood, voting must empower our society, and make us bold and strong. It will soon be December 7, and it will soon be you and I in the box…

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By: James Kofi Annan

[email protected]

The post When we elect a weak Parliament… [Article] appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

I have received a few reactions from some of my readers who think that it is because the interdiction has to do with St Augustine’s College, that is why people are screaming, that if it was a lesser known school, some of us would not have screamed as loud as we are doing presently.

Well I will like to place on record that I do not support the action of St Augustine’s Headmaster. And I will like to say that I am not an old student of St Augustine’s. I went to Winneba Secondary School. I only did the story because I believed, and still believe that Mr. Connel is only one of many heads of schools who are charging unauthorized fees, and that the action of the Deputy Minister is not sustainable as it does not seem to have been grounded in a known procedure.

In Ghana we turn to confuse the working of institutions with the blatant show of power. In a properly conducted institution, it is the rules and regulations of that institution, properly, fairly, predictably and universally applied that makes the institution independent. It is not when the Director feels the rule should apply, it is not when the appointing authority feels the rules must apply, it is when the rules says it must apply, and it applies, and it applies procedurally at all times, that is when we can say the system is working.

So for instance in the political parties law, the political parties are supposed to file their financial statements with the Electoral Commission six months after the general elections. That is the law. If any political party does not comply with this rule the sanctions must apply.

At the moment we know that the two big political parties, the NDC and the NPP did not comply with that provision in the law. So it is expected that the Electoral Commission, as per the rules, would have gone to court to enforce compliance, and if they fail to comply, the Commission would have cancelled their registration, and they would have ceased to exist as political parties, and it shall be said that the system has worked.

Of course Mrs Charlotte Osei could not have, on her own accord, cancelled the licenses of those non compliant political parties without going through due process. In order words, the independence of the commission is grounded in rules, and the law prescribes what processes that need to be followed in order for any action to be taken.

In my line of work, my organizations have encountered several instances, of strong men who try to display their powers, some have deliberately put us through very difficult situations, just to show us how powerful they think they are, but I have always faced up to them.

Leaders of our institutions get away with wrong actions because our citizens do not feel empowered to challenge their actions. So those leaders arrogate to themselves powers they do not have, and they act in the name of the institutions in wrong and unfair ways. The leaders fail to recognize that the institutions they work for are also the establishment of laws, and they are also governed by laws.

And because of the ignorance of the ordinary citizens, the institutions themselves become the embodiment of corruption, discriminatory application of the rules, abuse of office, and arbitrariness. The institutions that are supposed to ensure the protection of the rights of the ordinary citizens, rather become the centers of abuse, oppression and capriciousness.

One of the areas I am going to focus on in the next few months in this column, after the election, is the performance of our District Assemblies. In my view the District Assemblies have become convenient centers, not institutions, for large scale corruption, and sometimes I wonder why our society is always focused on Police corruption, and political corruption, when in fact the most corrupt public institutions are the District Assemblies.

I will return to this subject in later publications, but for the purposes of this article let me give you just one specific example, and in order to avoid being wrongly accused, I will give you an example from my own district assembly, the Effutu Municipal Assembly.

There is this illiterate woman who has lived in my village in her house, with her husband and children, for decades. She purchased her land from the traditional authorities in 1982, and built her house several years before the Town and Country Planning Department zoned that location. The house used to be a mud structure, and she gradually turned it into the current block structures, with permits (permit receipt numbers 913378, 0494719 and 0000612) from the Assembly.  I was a very small boy when I knew this woman lived where she lives now.

In June 2015, an officer of Town and Country Planning unit of the Effutu Municipal Assembly, under the guise of the Municipal Assembly, and with financial support from a private person, and with a police protection provided without any official processes from the Ghana Police Service, came to pull down a major part of this woman’s house, to pave way for this private person who wanted access road to his house. The Assembly came with no court order, and without notice.

Unfortunately this action resulted in the woman suffering a major stroke relapse, and has since not recovered. She has lost a major part of her house, including what would have served as a toilet facility, and as a stroke patient, she currently struggles with toilet and bathroom issues.

I have in the last one year supported this woman to seek redress. In my view, although the action was taken by a leader of the Assembly, you can clearly see that this is not an institutional action. It is strongmen at work. A Town and Country Planning officer who acted without following due process, but thought that because the woman was illiterate and ignorant of the law, could just, by presenting himself as a government agent, the woman will be afraid, and indeed the woman was afraid, to ask questions. And so this woman looked on helplessly and in tears as her house went down in rubbles.

In a proper institutional framework, and in order not to allow arbitrary use of power, such a decision would have been grounded on a procedure, and informed by recommendations arising out of an objective report, in accordance with law, and possibly a court order since this is a complete house with families living in it, and since the woman holds a permit, she would have been compensated before the demolition took place.

One person could not have just decided that someone (someone whose house was built only a couple of years ago) needs access to his house, and therefore a house built several decades ago with permits should be pulled down, without notice, and without compensation. This is impunity at work, this is power display, and this is an official misconduct, and it feels as though it might have been tainted with corruption.

But of course these are some of the things that happen when you have a poorly run Municipal Assembly. How else do you expect things to happen correctly when you have an assembly where throughout the year the Statutory Planning Committee which is supposed to meet four times a year, to approve building permits, has never met, yet you have several new buildings springing up, and you have permits being granted to developers who need them?

That is what happens when you have one person high-jacking the entire permitting process, doubling as the Municipal Planning Officer, and at the same time acting Regional Director, and he hoards application for building permits, and finds his own ways and means of having them signed without recourse to the appropriate statutory processes.

So the only victims of such dysfunctional Municipal Assembly are people like myself who they know has a lot of information regarding wrong practices, people like us who will refuse to keep quiet over their mishandling of the assembly, we are those who will suffer under such official paralysis.

So yes, the system needs to be allowed to work, and this is one of the things I have been advocating for in the last several years. But the working of the system within the institutions has nothing to do with the whims and caprices of the officers within the institutions. It has everything to do with the procedures, and the processes which are grounded in rules and regulations governing the institution, and the fair, equal and predictable applications of those rules.

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By: James Kofi Annan

The post …and the Effutu Municipal Assembly too? [Article] appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

According to a Ghanaian news portal, “the Deputy Minister of Education said the ministry took the action after investigating (I wonder how many days of investigation) and confirming reports on social media that the headmaster was charging the unapproved fees. According to him, the Ministry upon hearing and reading the news dispatched the regional director of Education to go to the school and investigate the reports. The regional director, the report said, confirmed the act and this caused the Director of Ghana Education Service (GES) to also go to the school for further investigations. The Director after confirming this handed an interdiction to him and has asked someone to take charge of the school”.

This is all winding, arbitrary, lack of due process and confusing. The long and short of the story is that the Deputy Minister is attempting to look good in the eyes of the public, that he has spotted a wrongdoing in St Augustine’s College, and has taken action to punish the person involved, right?

Why are we using Mr Joseph Connel to justify our relevance? You see why I get angry at myself all the time? Why did I even read this story in the first place; am just checking my BP.

Ghana Education Service, please, just take a sample of twenty schools across the country, and audit how much the schools are charging for both continuous and newly admitted students, and you will realize how much you have failed in your supervisory role.

We sit down for a social media to tell us how much schools are charging, and we are proud to say these things on air, and the headmaster get interdicted, but the Minister retains his job? If a person responsible for secondary education does not know that charging unapproved fees has been a rule rather than exception, then what is he occupying his position for?

Maybe I should help the Ministry to know how wide spread the situation is. And please don’t tell me I am boasting; I’m only giving you an information.

I am sponsoring a fresh student in Apam Secondary school. Last Friday I paid GHC922.20 for his fees, did you get that?

Again, I am sponsoring three continuing students in T. I. Ahmmadyya Secondary school. A few weeks ago I paid GHC483 for each one of them in fees. I am sponsoring two continuing Day Students in Winneba Secondary School, and I’m paying GHC133 each for their fees. I am sponsoring one student in Zion Girls, and I am paying GHC713 for her fees, and I’m sponsoring two girls in Cape Coast Technical Institute, and I am paying GHC400 in fees for each one of them.

So Mr. Deputy Minister, this is not social media. This is me informing you about some of the fees I have paid to the schools I have mentioned. Do you think any one of them have violated the rules of approved fees? Is it time for some of them to be interdicted as well?

In September 2012, while visiting Iowa State, in USA, I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as the consulting campaign strategist for President John Dramani Mahama. Our meeting lasted for a couple of hours, as he tried to glean as much information out of me as possible, to help him plan effective consulting strategy for the President.

This consultant, let me call him Jeff, had told me that his research findings, prior to meeting me, showed that what was going to decide the outcome of the elections was the performance of the Ghanaian economy. That if the government was able to fix the economy, the president stood a chance of winning the election.

I disagreed with Jeff’s research claims, and argued that if the president focused only on the economy, he was bound to lose the election. I believed the election was about the promise of the introduction of free education.

So I was not surprised when I later saw the president, on his campaign tours, mentioned gradual introduction of free secondary school education, just to neutralize the effect the catch phrase was having on the general public.

In August 2015, the Ghana Education Service issued a statement to the effect that all Day Students across Ghana are exempted from paying any fees in the various secondary schools in the year under review, and for the rest of their secondary schooling. That, according to the government, is the first step in making secondary school education progressively free. And my enquiries also showed that this year, the 2016/2017 academic year was going to see over 45,000 targeted disadvantaged secondary school students who will benefit from government scholarships.

Hear this; amongst the secondary school students I am personally sponsoring are two day students of Winneba Secondary School. One of them has two other siblings in other secondary schools. The parents are unemployed and poor, but the boy is a brilliant and smart. However this so called Day student scholarship did not cover him.

Again the second boy is one of six children being taken care of by his single unemployed mother. All his siblings have been affected by child trafficking, and I had helped the family to be established in the community. He too did not benefit from this so called free Day School scholarship.

Amongst the students I am sponsoring this year is an orphan whose father died when he was barely two years old, and his mother died when he was in primary class two. I took responsibility for the two of them, the youngest just got admitted to Apam Secondary school.

Obviously if anyone should qualify for any government scholarship, all the above are more than qualified to receive those so called scholarships. An orphan who lived in a very poor fishing community, and scored a distinction in the BECE, who else qualifies more than him?

But unfortunately, he too has not been covered by this gradual introduction of free secondary school education, and I had to pay over GHC900 before he was allowed in the school.

I can go on and on, but let me give you one last example: I brought Rita from the Lake Volta when she was barely seven years old. She was the sixth born of four girls, and three surviving boys. I took all the four girls to school while their parents continued to wallow in poverty.

In the course of time all the three other teen sisters became pregnant, some having had four children presently. Soon the mother was strike with massive stroke, and for five years has been confined in the house. To help the family survive, I offered the father a job as a security guard.

Rita, despite all these challenges, was determined to go to school. She eventually completed her BECE in 2014, and got admitted to a girls secondary school. Currently in form three, I have just paid GHC713 in fees for Rita, and GHC1,150 for her books, totaling GHC1,863.

My question: Is this a question of the non existence of the scholarship scheme, or a question of unfair inequitable selection of the beneficiaries, or is it a question of mental ulcer? Are we talking here of ethics, morality, or sheer insensitivity?

If Rita, and all those I have referred to in this article do not deserved to be covered by a government scholarship, then who are those who are deserving of our government scholarships?

Do you now see why I support a universal application of free secondary school education? My view is that if you make it free for all, then you remove the greed, the corrupt partisan cronyism, and you give fairness a chance to apply.

Saint Augustine’s college has done what every secondary school head is doing. Some ask for cement, brooms, shovels, paint, and others ask for fish. In the end, they have all asked the poor parents more than they can afford.

So please, leave Mr. Joseph Connel alone, and fix the system. What you have done is an unnecessary unsustainable show of power, a show of being a strong man. That is not what we need. We need Obama’s strong institutions, strong systems that does not need you to spot the problems on social media.

We are doing these to ourselves, to our children. One day we will all be punished, some for crimes they did not commit, but the crimes they saw being committed. One day we will all be punished, for the pain we wore, and the greed we shared. One day, and this day will be to all those who took their riches in government, that day the poor will rise, and the rich will fall…

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By: James Kofi Annan

The post St Augustine’s yes, Minister no? [Article] appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Unfortunately today I am very sad, and so all my plans have dissipated. I feel Ghana is losing it at every level. We need drastic measures; we need unconventional approach to address the deplorable quality of the education of our youth, honestly.

This morning while I was trying to put final touches to my script, a young university graduate (let me call him Martin) approached me for a job. He claimed to have been trying to reach me for months, and that he has written countless job application letters to my office, but none has borne positive fruit. So when he saw me at Run-Off, my restaurant, he thought that was his biggest opportunity to talk to me.

I admire Martin’s persistence. So somehow I decided to give him audience. He brought out several certificates, including his second upper class degree university certificate, certificates in a number of other short courses, a number of workshops he has attended, and finally he brought out his resume and application letter.

The application letter was not dated. He wrote Challenging Heights as Challenging height. The heading of the application letter was “Employment”. The first sentence of the letter read: “Dear sir, I will like to apply for employment in your outfit as an employee of your company, and I promise to give off my best when I am employed”. Remember he has already written the salutations before the “Employment” heading. The letter continued thus: “If I’m employed I will work consciously to safeguard your interest, and deliver to your satisfaction…”

By the time I got to the end of the third paragraph, I had given up on him, so I decided to put Martin’s application letter aside, and just have a conversation with him, to get to know him more. I discovered that Martin, although obtained second class upper, never read even a single book outside of his course work. On his CV he had stated that his hobbies included reading, but this reading, I got to know, related only to his course materials.

The former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Ernest Ayitey, is reported to have once said most graduates coming out of our universities are not employable. I hold that view too. As an employer myself, I have constantly been embarrassed by the poverty of knowledge and skills coming out of our universities. I have come across graduates, both from the universities and polytechnics, who are so self-intimidated, so much so, that I wonder the amount of impact the university education might have had on their confidence levels.

Of course during my time, in the late 90s, the same was said that educational standards were falling. But the quality then, I believe, was obviously higher than the quality now.

University education is about the holistic person packaged as a tool to change the world. It is about being a vessel through whom change happens. University education is about standing up for the discovery of truth, the discovery of life, a count in me, the gain pursued. It should not be about the gathering of certificates.

Whatever we have done, from basic school, to Senior High Schools, to the university has been to root in our children the tragedy of having in their hands unemployable certificates acquired through the force of society’s expectation of glorifying individuals who are able to gain university education, and as a mere route to ending personal poverty.

Therefore our students have deprived themselves of the richness of reading, they have deprived themselves of the quest for success, they have deprived themselves of the inquisitorial drive to discover themselves outside of the ordinary. We are so clothed with the convenience of mediocrity, so much so that we have confined our minds into mere lazy thought orbits.

The craze for short codes, text messaging, pictures, and social media in general, have made a worst story out of the situation. Although reading is still respected in the west where the new media was invented, we the consumers of such media seem to have abandoned, nearly completely, any interest in reading for pleasure, and for knowledge.

Rather we have deployed the new media not as tools to develop ourselves, but as medium of wasting our time, as a medium for destructive tendencies, as platforms for absurd short hands.

I am proud to mention that I was a good reader during my time at the University of Ghana. I read anything and everything that I laid my hands on. I did not have the means to buy the books I wanted to read, yet I took a personal responsibility to make library my friend. I read newspapers cover to cover, I read books, never mind how long ago it was written, I read them. I read more than hundred times books which were not related to my course work, and if you care to know I once read a whole book, cover to cover, on medicine!

So although I was a student of Psychology and Political Science, I did not care so much about them as much as I cared about reading other things that made the world so beautiful, to satisfy my emotional energy. These developed my confidence and levels of vocabulary, and helped me to be creative.

Just a couple of weeks ago I visited two friends of mine in America; Lisa Halsted in San Francisco and M. Night in Philadelphia. What I discovered made me realized how I have failed in my reading habit, although I thought I was a good reader.

Lisa’s husband, Scot, and M. Night, are both extremely busy business entrepreneurs with brutal work and other related schedules, one into film and television while the other is into hospital investments and a big time swimmer. I was shocked to the bone when I discovered, separately, that they both read over 50 books each year!

A few years ago I built a 50-capacity seated modern community library in Winneba. I stocked it with over 8,000 adult and children’s books, and did a lot of publicity to encourage Senior High School students and graduates to patronize the facility. I wanted to promote reading in our youth, and I wanted to promote the quality of literature in Winneba.

I have definitely been successful in promoting the library amongst children. I have been pleased with the massive patronage of the library by school children, even during weekends.

Unfortunately the many secondary school graduates in the town, the many university graduates who hail from the town, they all seem not interested. Their end goal is not the knowledge they have to acquire, their end goals seem to be the certificates they are waiting for, and the employment they hope to gain. They seem to be so uninterested in the very habits which will help them to achieve their goals better; they rather tend to seek a back door to success.

Students in Ghana seem too obsessed with first class, second class and so on. Too many students are under the false believe that first class will give you the quick job. I have told my daughter that I am not interested in any so called first class. If she ever obtained first class, then it should be that she earned it as a complete university product. It should not be that she only read her course books and passed and got a first class. That is not the way to earn a first class, that is not even the way to obtain a third class, that is academic dishonesty.

As we graduate with all the best classes in this world, and display our certificates, we turn to think that just because we hold those certificates, then we are deserving of employment, we are deserving of some job titles. I receive calls from all manner of relatives, friends, friends of friends, begging for me to employ their brothers, their sisters, their children, and so on.

Don’t beg for jobs! Any graduate who is unable to go out there, on his own, to search for a job of his own is not worth the employment he seeks. These are lazy uninitiated young people whose dependent limited knowledge destroys productivity.

I don’t know how many times we need to remind ourselves that things do not work that way. University education must not be only the pushing of papers, and reproduction of what the lecturers stood in front of us to teach. University education must not be a waste of time and resources.

University education must be a combination of the university environment, and what we made of it. It must include our own education, it must include the building of our own confidence, the classroom must only serve as a guide to exercise our skills, and apply our knowledge.

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By: James Kofi Annan

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