GHANA SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL CLOSED DOWN

GHANA SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL CLOSED DOWN
From: Joseph Ziem, Tamale
With just few months to celebrate its 50th Golden Jubilee anniversary, Ghana Senior High School (GHANASCO) in the Northern Regional capital, Tamale, has been momentarily closed down following violent riots by students on Sunday Midnight.
A team of police personnel from the Tamale Metropolitan Command have so far arrested sixteen male students of the school believed to be the first to start the hooliganism.
This followed sporadic warning shots and the shooting of sinister of teargas on campus by the police when the irate students resisted attempts to stop their arson behaviours.
The students according to The Daily Dispatch sources on campus burnt the brand new TVS Motorbike of the Senior House Master, Mr. Zakaria and vandalized several school properties worth thousands of Ghanaian Cedis.
The enraged students of GHANASCO numbering over 500 also blocked all the roads leading to the school, shattered the windscreen of the official vehicle belonging to the Tamale Metropolitan Education Director, Mr. Edward Gayuoni and inflicted wounds on a police officer.
Even though the school has been for the meantime shut down, the students are loitering in the surrounding villages such as Kukuo, Koblimagu and some roaming about in the Tamale Township.
A Science teacher of the school, Mr. Kwao Anyimah told correspondents that the violence started at about 12 midnight on Sunday when he heard the students throwing stones and chanting war-like songs heading towards the females’ dormitory.
According to him, he came out from his bungalow and rushed to the school administration block but only to find the Senior Housemaster’s motorbike set ablaze whiles the students threaten to slay one tutor called Mr. M.Z.
“Minutes later, a battalion of police personnel was called to the scene to prevent the hostility from getting out of hand” he said.
“But for the timely intervention of the police, the students would have set ablaze the Senior Housemistress bungalow” Mr. Anyimah disclosed.
Meanwhile, some of the students who spoke with this reporter narrated that their agitation stemmed from the fact that there had been some upward adjustment in their school fees and other bills that they never expected.
According to them, the school authorities ceased their cell phones and burnt them because the headmistress was against the use of such communication gadgets by students in the school. Adding, “the root cause of the problem was the school authority’s decision to lock up female students in their dormitories on Sunday May 30”.
They explained that the female students screamed for several hours and that forced them to rush to the scene and broke the doors to rescue them.
Madam Mary Dan-Braimah Asobayire, the Headmistress of GHANASCO however declined to comment on the matter, saying she had just returned from a journey and was yet to be briefed on the matter.
Ghanasco was established in 1960 by Ghana’s first President, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah and has a teaching staff of 80 and non-teaching staff of 71, whiles the student population stands at 1, 835. It has a very huge campus size and that has made students to sneak to town during the night, which some people say could be the reason why the female students were locked up. It is unclear when normal academic activities would resume, as teachers were in a meeting as at the time of filing this report.