By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 22, 2014
I have written extensively about the subject of the deliberate and unconscionable withholding of the book and research allowances of tertiary-academy faculty – or lecturers – by the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and so I do not intend to rehash my argument in defense of the same herein. What I simply want to say here is that a government that does not respect the pedagogical and intellectual production, and productivity, of the members of its highest citadels of learning does not, in turn, deserve our respect and loyalty.
That government definitely has absolutely no right, whatsoever, to call itself a government of the people, for the people and by the people – my profuse apologies to U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, such a government is merely a parasitic occupation force that deserves to be removed in the most radically legitimate manner that it possibly can be (See “Parliamentary Committee to Meet POTAG Over Strike” Citifmonline.com 7/22/14).
I have no idea what inspired the Mahama-led government of the so-called National Democratic Congress to arrive at the inexcusably primitive and nihilistic conclusion that it could summarily and callously stanch the professional life-blood of the country’s major academies and still expect Ghana to produce scholars and teachers who could readily hold their own against their counterparts on the global intellectual and cultural market. This scandalous state of affairs clearly points to the total and abject knowledge of what national development is really about and, even more significantly, where such progressive process of the critical creation and shaping of civilized humanity begins.
The great pity, though, is the fact that nearly each and every one of the executive operatives of the NDC is a prime beneficiary of the very institutions whose brain trusts are being so callously and literally starved to death. Maybe we need to emphasize, once again, for the umpteenth time, that without a sound educational system – at all academic levels – the soul and spirit of the nation would be lost, and then it would fall to foreigners to dictate the terms and direction of our destiny. And so far, this is the problem that we have been faced with for sometime now and are likely to be faced with for the foreseeable future.
This also largely explains why today Ghanaians have become avid and credulous consumers of the products of citizens of other nationalities, to the detriment of our own creativity and genius. We have also become blind imitators of other cultures. One only has to listen to our so-called Hip-Life music in order to arrive at such tragically avoidable conclusion. This, of course, is not to imply that “globalization” is without any redeeming features whatsoever. My unabashed contention here is that if we are to be highly respected around the globe as a people and a nation, then we had better start doing some really serious thinking about our worth and the nature of our contribution to the commonwealth of civilized humanity.
Those who have been vehemently opposed to the periodic or annual payment of book and research allowances due our tertiary-academy faculties, point to what they believe to be the apparent and/or palpable dearth of any significant research conducted by the recipients of such professional-development allowances, and the woeful lack of any worthwhile publications to show their paymasters for the same.
But even as I have had occasion to point out, time and again, the bulk of what legitimately passes for research among members of the professoriate often comes largely in the form of faculty development or professional enrichment, and this includes regular attendance and organization of academic and professional conferences for the salutary exchange of new ideas as well as new and more effective ways of knowledge acquisition, impartation or dissemination. This is what is presently called “Best Practices.”
If not much that is substantive appears to be happening in our citadels of higher learning, then, perhaps, the entire process of academic practice in the country needs to be critically examined and overhauled, if necessary. Scapegoating our professors and lecturers for problems that have existed and been neglectfully allowed to fester by past and successive governments for decades, is hardly the aptest solution.
