Isaac Bonsu
A youth activist of the governing New Patriotic Party in the Ashanti Region, Isaac Bonsu, says President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has focused more on infrastructural development than his predecessor, John Dramani Mahama.
Speaking to the media over the weekend, Mr Bonsu stated that education is one of the essential ingredients in building a prosperous nation, which ostensibly cannot be achieved without proper provision of infrastructure to accommodate the ever growing numbers.
“There has been myriad of efforts to decrease the deficit in infrastructure by former President Mahama and Nana Addo’s governments in recent times. The battle to ascertain who has performed better in this area will always be interminable. However, with the benefit of their first four years at our disposal, it makes it a lot easier to do a comparative analysis to determine the best performer in this regard.
“The first four years of the Mahama led NDC administration managed to build 840 classrooms which in effect accommodated 33,600 students whiles the NPP’s administration led by President Akufo-Addo built 2,729 classrooms, paving way to accommodate extra 109,160 students to be admitted,” he added.
Comparative analysis
Mr Bonsu noted that former President Mahama’s manifesto in 2016, which pledged to build 200 community day SHS did not just fail woefully but was disastrous after thorough audit was done on the number of completed schools the public was fed with. It turned out the audit report captured 29 as fully completed, which was a sharp contrast to the 45 NDC reported.
On the other hand, he indicated, President Akufo-Addo did not build community day SHS but provided seven brand new comprehensive SHS buildings, comprising administration blocks, classrooms blocks, dormitory blocks, dining halls, assembly halls, laboratories, libraries, creative arts and science blocks, staff accommodations, recreational facilities, to ensure quality teaching and learning.
He mentioned that another thing which is worthy of note is that the Akufo-Addo administration in the area of Technical and Vocational Education Training(TVET) built 21 sophisticated TVET centres of excellence across the country while the Mahama administration failed to put up a single infrastructure in the area of TVET in its entire eight-year governance.
In addition to the above listed projects, Mr Bunso further stated that the Akufo-Addo government has expanded many existing SHSs to create more space to accommodate the increase in enrolment as a result of the Free SHS programme.
This comparative analysis, he said, clearly indicate that by far the NPP government performed better than NDC government in their first four years.
