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Let’s be careful about these reckless spendings and purchases
The latest news item that trended on social media about two weeks ago, was the spending of a whopping GH¢34.8 million on past questions for the 2021 West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) candidates by the government.
In that story the Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, was reported to have told parliament that the ministry procured 446,954 sets of past questions at a unit price of GH¢78.00. He explained that the unit price represented a 32 per cent increase over the year 2020 unit price of GH¢59.00. The ministry, he said, reportedly received 416,060 Scientific Mathematical Instruments to the tune of GH¢ 31,204,500.00.
REASONS FOR THE PURCHASE OF PAST QUESTION PAPERS
Addressing parliament on Wednesday, July 14, 2021, the minister indicated that the decision was to prepare the final year students for the 2021 WASSCE and that the items which were funded from the Free Senior High School Account, were purchased from Messrs Kingdom Books and Stationery.
“Mr Speaker, in 2020, Government through its efforts to help students amidst COVID-19 pandemic, to prepare for the 2020 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), procured 568,755 past questions for students to try their hands on before sitting for the actual exam,”he said.
He intimated that the procurement of these past questions which was funded through the Free Senior High School account ensured that the results of the 2020 WASSCE was tremendous compared with previous years’ WASSCE performance.
CONTROVERSY OVER THE PURCHASE OF PAST QUESTION PAPERS
The procurement of these items by the government has since generated a lot of controversy among the people, especially members from the main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC). Besides, there have been divergent views as to why the country should spend that colossal amount to procure these items. Why some are in favour of the purchase of the past questions which they claimed has improved the performance of the students in the past, others think it was needless and baseless because of the country’s financial situation. Both sets of opinion are welcomed and that people are entitled to them.
Whether the purchase of these items was done through the laid down procurement processes, is another issue that must be interrogated further. Besides, issues involving purchases of such items must be laid before, parliament for consensus and approval by members from both sides of the House. This, therefore, raises questions as to whether the Minority side of the house, was not aware of the purchase of these items.
PREPARATION OF FINAL YEAR STUDENTS TOWARDS WASCE
If my memory serves me right, I quite remembered that what pertained to the past regarding preparations of final year students of the former West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE) was for the students themselves to purchase their own past examination questions for which the teachers used to prepare them for the real examination. That was, indeed, necessary because it exposed the students to become familiar with the questions, so that they could answer them easily when the real examination took place. That in effect minimised fears and anxiety among the students and gave them some sort of encouragement to write the examinations.
GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE ON PAST QUESTION PAPERS
It is, therefore, surprising to hear that the government is now spending huge sums of money to buy these past examination papers for the students every year. Whether these past questions are left in the hands of the students after their examination is something that should be brought to public domain. In any case, these past questions become stale every year because of the mode of how these questions are set for the students to answer.
What is more baffling, is the tendency of government to use the COVID-19 pandemic to justify some of these purchases with our meagre resources at the least opportunity. That is not fair and we need to move away from that viewpoint.
PROCUREMENT OF MATHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS
Another issue that need to be thoroughly interrogated and investigated was the procurement of 416, 060 scientific mathematical instruments at GH¢ 31,204,500. The public and for that matter Ghanaians will be interested in knowing the mode of distribution of these items which were purchased with the taxpayers’ money.
This country is facing financial crisis and that can be seen in the various sectors of the economy. School children are learning under trees as there are limited classrooms to accommodate them, some are even writing on bare floors, there are no classroom furniture, our roads are bad and deplorable, there are areas without pipe borne water or boreholes, public hospitals and clinics are crying for drugs and essential equipment, there are food shortages and this has facilitated the rising cost of living among the people, lack of funds to purchase vaccines to deal with the rising trend of the deadly coronavirus disease, yet money is spent aimlessly and needlessly on things that have no relevance to our survival as a nation.
PURCHASE OF SPUTNIK VACCINES
It is recalled that recently, there was a controversy over the mode of procurement of 3.4 million doses of the Sputnik vaccines from a middleman by the Ministry of Health which generated a lot of anxiety among Ghanaians.
The media, especially the internet, were inundated with criticisms of the government, especially the health ministry over the mode of procurement of those vaccines.
A popular Norwegian website on the internet alleged that the Ghana Government signed an agreement to purchase the Sputnik vaccines manufactured and produced in Russia at US$19 per dose instead of US$10. The Finance Minister alluded to the contract and explained that the government had no choice to make in order to protect the people, hence the decision to pay for the purchase of US$19 Sputnik vaccine.
This matter is currently pending before a parliamentary committee set up by the Speaker to investigate the mode of procurement of these vaccines.
LOOKING DOWN ON THE CITIZENS BY SUBSEQUENT GOV’TS
It is a fact that subsequent governments have not put the interests of the people as their priority and have allowed them to suffer unjustifiably and unduly, even though they secure their mandates to govern this country. Once they gain power, they forget them entirely to wallow in abject poverty.
This is the time for Ghanaians to rise up and hold government accountable for any funds used in the provision of goods and services for our country. Let us not allow these reckless spending and purchases to go on without speaking against them because, after all, it is our own money (taxpayers’ money) which is being used to provide social and economic infrastructure for our dear country.
We cannot continue to spend money recklessly and aimlessly, only to fall back on the multilateral and bilateral institutions internationally to bail us out of our predicaments. The public purse must be well protected and safeguarded through the adherence of the procurement processes as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution.
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One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
