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Ghana will revert to writing WASSCE in May/June – GES Director-General
Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, The Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), has announced that Ghana will revert to writing the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) in May/June of 2024.
He said Ghana is considering scheduling the timetable for the examination of 2024 based on contact hours in the classroom adding that this year’s WASSCE will be written by Ghana alone.
Four-member countries of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) — Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia — have returned to the May/June calendar and administered the WASSCE for their school candidates from May 9 to June 24, 2022.
He said “We are hoping that by 2024, we would have come up to the same level with the other member countries.
“That is why we said this year the calendar that we put out was a transitional calendar. We are transiting to go back to our old calendar when we start school from September/October and end in June/July the following year.”
According to Prof. Opoku-Amankwa, the 2022 WASSCE candidates would write the examination from August 1 to September 27, 2022, while “for 2023, we hope to write the examination a bit earlier than this year, most likely July/August.” Prof Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa
Amankwah explained that Ghana made a case that returning to the May/June calendar immediately would amount to disadvantaging the candidates “because they would not have met the 1,134 contact hours.”
“So we made a case to WAEC, the issue was considered at the international level and they agreed that we write our examination outside of the others,” he stated.
“But just as the May/June and the Nov/Dec examinations are both standardised and the award systems and the processes that they go through are the same, so is our August/September WASSCE an international WASSCE examination, the only difference being that the period when it is written is different from that of the other countries.
“We believe that our insistence on contact hours is a major contributor to the performance of our students in the WASSCE so far because we make sure that they get the fullest. In the past, they were doing about 1,080 contact hours in a year, but now they do 1,134 in a year and that, we believe, has contributed to their performance,” Prof. Amankwa noted.
“What we realised in the past with those rogue websites was that even though we tried as much as possible to start the papers at the same time, because of time differences, some countries might start slightly earlier than others and so some of those rogue website operators took advantage of that,” he explained.
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Focus on more pressing issues like Galamsey, not hate speech – Ellen Ama Daaku to Mahama
An aide to former Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia,Ellen Ama Daaku has advised President John Dramani Mahama to shift his attention from social media hate speech to more urgent national issues such as illegal mining.
Speaking in an interview, she noted that the President’s recent comments about tracking the IP addresses of people who spread hate speech were unnecessary.
According to her, President Mahama must first define what he considers to be hate speech before seeking to punish people for it.
Ms. Daaku argued that the President himself had benefitted from hate speech and social media attacks in the past when he was in opposition.
She said even during his time in government, he described his opponents and their tribesmen in unpalatable terms, which later drew complaints from former President Nana Akufo-Addo to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
She stressed that harsh criticism of leaders on social media should not automatically be considered hate speech, adding that former leaders, including former President Nana Akufo-Addo had all been subjected to it.
“He is only feeling what Nana Akufo-Addo went through for eight years,” she remarked.
While acknowledging the need to regulate misconduct online, Ms. Daaku insisted that going after social media activists should not be a priority.
She noted that many political activists, including herself, had been insulted and attacked online but never called for arrests.
She concluded that President Mahama should focus his energy on solving pressing problems such as galamsey and the economy instead of concentrating on critics on social media.
By: Jacob Aggrey
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Prof Alidu Seidu files nomination for Tamale Central seat
The newly elected parliamentary candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for Tamale Central, Prof Alidu Seidu, has submitted his nomination forms to the Electoral Commission.
As of 10:00 a.m. today, he was the only person who had filed to contest the seat.
Nomination of candidates will close at the end of the day.
Associate Professor and Head of the Political Science Department at the University of Ghana Legon, Prof. Alidu Seidu won the National Democratic Congress (NDC) parliamentary primaries in the Tamale Central constituency with a landslide victory.
The elections, supervised by the party’s Elections and IT Directorate in the Northern Region, saw Prof. Seidu poll 840 votes out of the total valid ballots cast.
His closest contender, Lawyer Hanan Gundadow Abdul-Rahaman, secured 536 votes.
The other aspirants could not make significant gains, with Dr. Seidu Fiter obtaining 44 votes, Aliu Abdul-Hamid 23 votes, and the rest recording fewer than 10 votes each.
In all, 1,500 ballots were cast, with 6 ballots rejected and 7 spoilt ballots recorded.
The results were signed and declared by Dr. Arnold Mashud Abukari, NDC Northern Regional Director of Elections and IT.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) held parliamentary primaries in Tamale Central to choose a candidate for the upcoming by-election following the death of the sitting Member of Parliament, Dr. Ibrahim Murtala Mohammed. Dr. Mohammed, who also served as Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, tragically died in a military helicopter crash in the Adansi Akrofuom District on August 6, 2025, alongside seven others.
His passing left the Tamale Central seat vacant, as required by Ghana’s 1992 Constitution.
The Electoral Commission has scheduled the by-election for September 30, 2025. While the NDC moved quickly to open nominations and vet aspirants, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) announced it would not contest the seat, citing the need to respect the somber circumstances and promote national unity.
By: Jacob Aggrey
