Poor Performance Of Schools In Savelugu-Nanton Municipality

Stakeholders in the educational sector in the Savelugu-Nanton Municipality of the Northern Region of Ghana, have been urged to play their supervisory role effectively in order to reverse the growing trend of low enrolment and retention of pupils and poor performance of schools in the area.

According to a report by the Ghana Education Service (GES) in the Municipality, 22 Junior High Schools were presented for the 2012 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and out of that figure, 15 schools scored below 40 percent representing 68.20 percent of the overall figure.

Some of the underlying causes attributed to the poor performance of the schools included candidates lack of adequate understanding of simple concepts in their subject areas; incomplete coverage of syllabus/loss of contact hours; weak foundation at the primary level; poor attitude of teachers towards work; lack of standardized mode of assessment to track schools performances and high level of truancy among BECE candidates after registration.

Others were inappropriate use of instructional hours by teachers; lack of parental supervision and monitoring of children’s learning behavior; negative peer influence; inadequate or poor supervision of schools by GES officials as well as mass promotion of pupils to the next class at the end of academic years.

Speaking at a sensitization workshop organized by Bibir Ghana in Savelugu, the Director of Human Resource Management at the GES Chief Mahama Abubakari, also cited frequent teacher absenteeism/lateness to school; loss of professional ethics including poor teacher-parent-community relations; non-preparation of scheme work/lesson plans; and non-observation of schools performance and appraisal meetings, among others as contributory factors for poor performance of schools in the area.

Participants at workshop

Chief Mahama stated that until it became compulsory for parents to enroll their wards in school and also took care of their learning materials and uniforms whilst government and its stakeholders such as PTAs, SMCs and GES ensured enrolment levels were improved and sustained, logistics supplied and teachers performance assessed and monitored regularly, schools would continue to record poor performances every year.

He charged PTAs and SMCs to own schools in their localities and monitor the attendance of pupils likewise teachers to ensure that everybody was performing their roles effectively. Adding, he emphasised that teachers who have been provided with accommodation in their schools should try and stay there instead living in town and commuting everyday to and fro school.    

Under the theme: “Supporting Basic Education In Communities of Northern Ghana; The Role of Stakeholders”, the workshop brought together Parent Teacher Associations, School Management Committees and Teachers of some ten selected basic schools in the Savelugu-Nanton Municipality whose academic performances in recent years appeared to be dwindling. 

It was aimed at building the capacities of these stakeholders on how to identify some of the negative factors confronting quality education delivery in their various communities and schools and find lasting solutions to those challenges. By this, participants were encouraged to play effective collaborative roles by ensuring that community members including parents and chiefs monitor the work of teachers by visiting schools and give them support as and when it was necessary while teachers too, could visit homes of pupils who do not turn up for school.

The workshop which was part of the implementation of a project by Bibir dubbed “Supporting Basic Education in The Communities of Northern Ghana” with funding from Intervida, would also provide beneficiary schools with learning materials.

According to the Executive Director of Bibir, Joseph Charles Osei, in-service training would also be organized for teachers who teach core mathematics, English and Integrated Science.

About 260 pupils, he said, would be registered under the National Health Insurance Scheme whilst those whose card had expired would have theirs renewed. “In addition to this, we’ll donate bursaries such as sandals, exercise books, school bags and other learning materials to pupils of the various schools”, he disclosed.

Mr. Osei observed that if stakeholders shirked their responsibilities, there would be continuous poor performance of schools in the Northern sector and charged them to live up to expectation.

Group picture after workshop

About Bibir-Ghana

Bibir-Ghana, a local NGO based in Tamale has its operational areas in the Tamale Metropolitan and Tolon/Kumbungu Districts. Established in 2005, the organization works with mainly women and children in deprived communities. The emphasis is on giving children a good environment and health to enable them gain access to formal education so as to be the motor of change in society. It is because of its support for children that a local name “BIBIR” which literally means children in Dagaare, was chosen to enable many people understand what the organization stand for. Since children can either be direct beneficiaries through the distribution of school materials, they can also be indirect beneficiaries through the empowerment of their mothers. Once the women are empowered, the children's education can be sustained.

GMA Strike Action: Upper East Sits On Keg Of Gunpowder

Doctors and pharmacists in the Upper East Region have agreed to back out of the ongoing nationwide strike action declared by the leadership of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA).

But the region is sitting on a keg of gunpowder which might explode anytime soon to kill its joy. This is because the non-striking physicians and chemists, though they say the decision to stay back at post is in the interest of an extremely deprived region, have also hinted that the grace period will gradually fade off if their demands are not met in time.

Another fearsome development which is already forecasting its shadow is the pharmacists’ ripening threat to join the strike bandwagon anytime soon— an afterthought yet to creep into the mind’s eye of the doctors says Dr. Peter Baffoe, Medical Superintendent of the Regional Hospital, in an interview with this blogger in Bolgatanga: “Conscious of the effect of the [strike] action, we have put some measures in place especially for emergency cases as well as maternal and child health issues. We only pray and hope that the strike does not linger for long.”

An attempt by this correspondent to talk to the head and some staff members of the Pharmacy Department at the hospital was met with concrete walls of hostile rebuff. Later, some staff members anonymously told this correspondent that the pharmacists at the facility were angry “and could have pounced on you” because the decision to pull out of the nationwide strike action was imposed on them from above.

Dr. Baffoe, again, says meetings are underway between the pharmacist body and the Regional Health Directorate on their grievances. The outcome of the meetings will determine the path the patients will take, he stated.

A walk round departments and wards by this paper can confirm that the hospital has remained as busy as a beehive. Doctors and their inseparable partners in pharmacy are at post and attending to a mammoth turnout of patients in what is supposed to be a nationwide strike affair.

Mr. Ali Anaba, a patient who just came out of a ward, told me he had a quality time with his doctor, and he was fine— very fine. A tall, dark-skinned mother in a long queue at the Out-Patients Department (OPD), Joyce Asumaka, said she had retrieved her baby’s folder from the records department and was confident she would enter the consulting room in no time with her sleeping little one.

The doctor-patient ratio in the region has been one to thirty-six thousand, and nurse-patient ratio: one to two thousand and fifty. Any prolonged period of such strike action would only detonate a keg of gunpowder on the ‘shelterless’ heads of patients in the region.

Police, Fire And Assembly Officials Brutalise Metro TV Cameramen

Officers of the Ghana Police Service, the Ghana National Fire Service as well as officials from the Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly have subjected two Metro TV cameramen to what many observers say is yet another vicious attack on press freedom.

The two cameramen, Abdulai Issaka and Bashiru Issaka, were caught in crossfire when the assembly led the officers in a revenue mobilisation exercise on the streets within the municipality.

Early this month, the Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly launched a surprise exercise to mobilise revenue from defaulting owners of shops and signposts. To ensure that the operation was a success, the assembly accompanied its mobilisation team with the Ghana Police Service and the Ghana National Fire Service to deal with the much-anticipated public resistance.

The operation on the first day saw a number of stores locked up and scores of signposts either uprooted or flattened. As expected, some shop owners resisted, armed with documents to prove they did not owe the assembly. But the team, which apparently was not prepared to listen to explanations, still found some faults as enough reasons to penalise storekeepers and signpost owners.

For example, traders who had extended the eavesdrops of their shops by a finger’s length just to avoid the disturbing rain splash and sunrays were asked to pay spot fines ranging between seventy Ghana cedis and one hundred Ghana cedis or have their stores bolted with colossal padlocks from the Assembly’s ‘blacksmiths’.

To worsen matters for traders who had no roaming cash on them, the team also insisted on ready notes, not cheque. Some traders resisted, claiming that the extra demands imposed by the Assembly officials were not part of the Assembly’s bye-laws. But they were matched with brute force from the Police and the Fire Service officers. One of the brutalised traders had his teeth removed in the struggles whilst some shops were completely destroyed. Some stores were locked up without pity for the perishable items in them.

When two Metro TV cameramen, Abdulai Issaka and Bashiru Issaka, focused their camera on a scene in which the officers were dragging one of the traders on the ground to their vehicle, they were subjected to physical assault. Bashiru Issaka escaped the hit of a sledge hammer from one of the angry-looking Fire Service officers, but had his camera crushed and seized. The tape inside the camera, which also contained some important news materials about a schoolboy who jumped to his death from a four-storey building at the Bolgatanga Technical Institute and other sensitive items, was also destroyed.

The development attracted some veteran journalists as well as the Upper East Regional Chairman of the Ghana Journalists Association, Mr. Eric Amoh, to the scene.

In an interview with this writer, Mr. Dominic Abakuri, a medical consultant, said even though he presented all documents to the team to show that his medical centre did not owe the assembly, his explanation was brushed aside and he was wrongly accused.

“Since the team insisted on locking up my office, I only decided to go for my car key and money which were inside the office. They wouldn’t allow me. I only had a body contact with one of the police officers and they held it against me as a crime,” he narrated after he had been dragged to the police vehicle not any less than a criminal guilty of the charge pressed against him.

“Why should they [the Assembly] charge me as much as one hundred Ghana cedis (Gh¢100) just for extending my roof to protect the door to my shop from rain?” asked Mr. Richard Anim, one of the affected businessmen. “And why are they insisting on cash, not cheque?” he pressed.

Some aggrieved-looking businesswomen who spoke to this paper said they could not help wondering if the sour twist to the revenue collection exercise was the “e dey bee keke” campaign promise trumpeted by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on the road to the 2012 victory— or the team from the Assembly “was just doing its own thing”.

The two Metro TV cameramen are yet to recover from the neck and chest pains suffered from the brutality suffered in the crossfire. The whereabouts of the crushed camera and the tape is not known and an overdose of efforts to glean a reaction from the Municipal Chief Executive for Bolga, Mr. Edward Ayagle, has proved abortive.

The Upper East Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Bright Oduro, who was not in the region at the time, assured this writer in a telephone interview of thorough investigations into the incident.

Tamale Chief Urges Youth to Emulate The Spirit Of Chief Medicine

Chief of Tamale

The Chief of Tamale, Naa Dakpema Mohammed Alhassan Dawuni has reprimanded the youth of the three Northern Regions to discard the spirit of despondency, violence and the glorification of poverty and rather learn from the experiences of Chief Godfred Mediciné, President and founder of the Mediciné Foundation and the Executive Chairman of US Group of Companies.

 

According to the Chief, the youth of the north could not continue to throw their hands in despair and be contented with their present undesirable life situation, but must somewhat gather the courage, determination and the spirit of perseverance to become self-reliant-as exhibited by the Ghanaian born Chief Mediciné when he was sold into slavery at the age of six. 

Chief Godfred Mediciné, a native of Volta Region of Ghana was enslaved at a tender age (6), suffered torture, maiming, suppression and was even starved and condemned to death at the hands of his slave masters. But he defied all odds and determined to live to tell his story one day. Instead of counting his losses, Chief Mediciné rather saw hope and success at the end of the tunnel, which has now moved him from zero to hero. 

He currently runs over 30 companies in the United States ranging from Real Estates, Print and Electronic Media, Tilapia Investment, Construction and many more. He also owns the Mediciné Foundation, which is sponsoring and giving free vocational training to millions of youth across Ghana and Africa. 

However, the Chief of Tamale gave the advice when Mr. Dela Tengey, National Coordinator of the “Zero to Hero” project and his entourage, paid a courtesy call on him at his palace in Tamale. The Visit was to introduce to Naa Dakpema, a life changing book titled “Zero to Hero” carefully written by Chief Medicine’ which sought to chronicle his true life experience and how to move from hopelessness to success.

The Tamale Chief after reading the book and described it as a “must read” for every Ghanaian especially the idle youth, gave his blessing to the Zero to Hero project. 

He was confident that the project which sought to sponsor three million idle youth in the three Northern Regions of Ghana to acquire vocational skills, holds the key to end the frequent destructive violence in the north mostly associated with the unemployed youth.

According to Naa Dakpema, government alone could not address the needs of all the youth and called on other philanthropists to emulate the example of Chief Godfred Medicine’.

Conversely, the National Coordinator of the “Zero to Hero” project, Mr. Dela Tengey later in a Press Conference with the media in Tamale explained that the main aim of the project was to lift one million indigenes from poverty in each of the 10 regions of Ghana. The project targets the uninspired, depressed, hopeless and the youth who want to give up on life. 

The Beneficiaries of the Zero to Hero free training project would be selected by individuals who would buy a copy of the Book. They would be given one year intensive training in carpentry, masonry, handicrafts, video editing, dress-making, hair dressing, catering and many more, and would be engaged in active and lucrative businesses.

Mr. Tengey revealed further that, the training of the targeted one million individuals would commence in July this year 2013.  

According to him, Chief Godfred Medicinѐ was motivated to embark on this project in partnership with his US group of Companies to transform the lives and give the right opportunities to the youth to become self-reliant.

Prof. Oloruntoba Urges Capacity Building In Agric, Rural Development

Prof. Abayomi Oloruntoba

A Professor of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development Abayomi Oloruntoba, has called on African governments and other actors in the agricultural sector to seriously consider capacity building as an elixir for agricultural and rural development.

According to him, amid all the bigger challenges confronting agriculture on the African continent capacity building seemed to be receiving less attention or not at all from stakeholders in the sector when addressing them, thus the need for them to seriously consider lack of capacity building as a gap that needed to be bridged in order to ensure positive impact was made in smallholder farming in rural areas. 

Delivering the maiden inaugural lecture of the University for Development Studies (UDS) on the theme: “Unleashing The Power of Capacity Building As An Elixir For Agricultural And Rural Development”, Prof. Oloruntoba observed that, in Africa, the pervasive poverty in rural areas was often blamed on lack of capacity building of the rural folks as a result of numerous ineffective strategies employed in eradicating poverty. He noted that, if poverty was to be reduced, productivity of the agricultural sector must be increased. 

However, agricultural productivity, he argued, would not increase if the capacity of farmers and other actors in the agricultural value chain remained low, preventing them from being innovative. “Innovations could include new agricultural knowledge or technologies related to primary production, processing, and commercialization –all of which can positively affect productivity, competitiveness, and livelihoods of farmers and others. By putting farmers and other actors at the front burner of innovative practices and encouraging learning through the interchange of ideas, successes, and failures, they could develop the capacity to operate efficiently in the knowledge economy”, he emphasised.

He also stated that, in sub-Sahara Africa, capacity building was important for agriculture because extension staff worked closely with farmers. “They take on roles as facilitators by helping farmers to identify their production problems and opportunities, thereby helping them to help themselves”, he said, stressing “capacity building is a concept closely related to education, training and human resource development.”   

But Prof. Oloruntoba identified poor funding attitude by governments towards agriculture research and development; poorly trained extension staff by training institutions; lack of coordination among agriculture and rural development stakeholders such as farmers, policymakers, universities, NGOs, among others as they worked independently of each other without synergy; and refusal to use ICT mechanisms such as mobile phones to harness ICT potential in extension services since there were low numbers of extension agents to disseminate the required information needs of farmers as some of the challenges confronting capacity building. 

He maintained that agricultural development was key to ending hunger in sub-Saharan Africa, and advocated that all stakeholders in this sector should promote and facilitate continual capacity building. 

He also observed that students’ farm practical had proved to be a novel programme availing opportunity for undergraduate students to gain practical skills supplemented by theoretical knowledge in agriculture. In order to make the programme relevant and increase the quality of teaching, he urged instructors to avail themselves of modern techniques in agriculture.

Prof. Oloruntoba also recommended that farmers should be encouraged to participate in the research process and in the promotion of environmentally sustainable agriculture. 

Inaugural lectures have been an essential feature of university life for centuries. It is a significant event in an academic staff member’s career at the university to mark his/her promotion or appointment to full professorship. For the university, it is an occasion to celebrate and showcase the academic achievements of its staff. It therefore provides newly promoted/appointed professors with the opportunity to inform colleagues, the campus community and the general public of their work to date.

Thus, the first inaugural lecture of the UDS in Tamale was intended to celebrate the elevation of Prof. Abayomi Oloruntoba of the Department of Agricultural Extension, Rural Development and Gender Studies of the Faculty of Agriculture of the UDS to full professorship in January, 2012.

Prof. Oloruntoba has an interesting mix of academic and professional backgrounds which span over three decades as a lecturer, management trainer, extensionist, researcher and consultant all of which put him in good stead for his role as Professor of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development.

He graduated with a B.Sc (Agriculture) in Forest Resources Management from Nigeria’s Premiere University, the University of Ibadan, in July 1979. He also earned a Master’s degree in Resource Science with specialization in Economics and Policy from the University of California, Berkely, U.S.A in December 1984 and a Ph.D. degree in Agricultural Extension and Rural Development from the University of Ibadan in May 2000.

Oloruntoba was a visiting scholar at the University of Ghana, Department of Agricultural Extension during his sabbatical leave in 2007/08. In 2010, he joined the UDS and was appointed to full professor of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development in January 2012.

Prof. Oloruntoba’s lecture examined capacity building as it related to agriculture and rural development drawing on a compendium of research expositions and ‘hands-on’ experience of himself. The paper outlined the different types of capacity building methods used, namely; capacity building in agricultural extension for farmers, extension, researchers and students. This was followed by constraints confronting capacity development; conclusions and policy recommendations were made aimed at improving the capacity building of agriculture and rural development practitioners, research scientists, farmers and students.  

Exclusion Of Women In Decision-Making Bad For Ghana's Democracy

Mr.Alhassan Imoro

One of Ghana’s veteran journalist and media trainer, Alhassan Imoro, has observed that the continued exclusion and marginalization of majority of women during decision-making is bad and does not create a strong and healthy democracy for the country.

He said that there must be increased effort by the media, civil society organizations and for that matter government, towards ensuring the participation of women in the public and private spheres of the nation’s economy.

Speaking at a workshop organized by the Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA) in Tamale to train media practitioners on the best strategies to employ to promote women’s participation in decision-making and election into political positions, Mr. Imoro said the situation in the country particularly the Northern Region, called for a positive change for women in the political, economic and socio-cultural sectors of Ghana’s economy.

According to him, it required a more determined and coordinated set of actions by the media, women themselves, gender advocates, traditional authorities, political parties and governmental institutions within Ghana’s decentralization system to bring about change.

In spite of the good role the media had played and continued to play towards enhancing women representation in decision-making and local governance, he noted that, there was still a lot more work to be done in terms of awareness creation on gender mainstreaming and grassroots participation in governance. He emphasised that women who had been relegated to the background needed support and encouragement from the media to get their voices heard for them to get involve and participate effectively in local governance.

Mr. Imoro who is also the General Manager of Zaa FM, a local radio station in Tamale, urged the media to bring to the fore and notice of community members, parents, traditional authorities and other stakeholders, the challenges that hindered the effective involvement and participation of potential women leaders in decision-making and local governance. He cited for instance, public vilification of political leadership, difficulties in funding campaigns, lack of programmes that mentor women/young girls to prepare them for leadership positions and among others, as some of the factors contributing towards the low participation of women in politics.

The media, he observed, could also encourage men especially, and community leaders (including women leaders) to create space and voice for enterprising women to participate in decision-making and leadership roles in their communities and districts.

He also asked the media to sensitise and educate parents, community members and the electorate (especially men) to support and vote for women to be elected as Unit Committee and Assembly Members as well as legislators to enable women to influence policies and programmes affecting the vulnerable group (women and children).

Mr. Imoro further charged the media to keep reminding the government about its pledge to appoint 40 percent of women across board to serve in leadership positions, because it was only when such transformation took place that it would create opportunities for women to contest presidential elections in future.    

For instance, statistics indicated that Ghana’s Parliament has since 1960 been underrepresented by women where only 10 women were elected out of 104 legislators, 1965 recorded 19 female legislators out of 104, 1969 saw a very discomforting figure of 1 female legislator out of 104 while 1979 also saw an appreciable rise of 5 females out of 140 legislators. 

Furthermore, in 1992, 16 females out of 200, 1996 saw 18 out of the same 200 and the figure rose to 19 in 2000 out of 200. However, the 2004 parliament recorded a high number of 25 female legislators out of the 230 and 2008 also recorded 20 out of 230, but the number now per the 2012 elections stands at 27 females out of a total of 275 legislators. 

At the district level, the statistics further showed that 122 women were elected Assembly Members nationwide as against 4,082 males in 1994, 196 women in 1998 as against 4,624 males, year 2000 saw 341 women against 4,241 males and in 2006 recorded 433 elected women as against 4,301. 

In the Northern Region, the largest region in Ghana, out of a total of 137 females that contested the District Assembly Elections in 2010, only 19 of them were voted. In that same year, while only one was elected to the Tamale Metro Assembly compared to 64 males, no woman was elected in nine other districts in the region. Overall, only 6 women in the entire region won the elections to become Assembly Members out of a total of 43 women who contested.  

According to the 2010 Population and Housing Census, the population of the Northern Region stood at 2,479,461 representing about 10 percent of Ghana’s population. Of this figure, the male population was 1,229,887 whereas that of women was 1,249,574. This showed that the population of women in the region exceeded that of men by 19,687.

The workshop marked the end of a 36-month GDCA and European Union project dubbed: “Supporting Women’s Participation in Elections (SWOPE) in Northern Region” that spanned between 2010 and 2013. It was intended to increase civic awareness for support for women in politics in the region and also increase the number of women representation in the local governance system in six Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies including Tamale Metropolis, Yendi Municipality, Saboba, Central Gonja, Nanumba North and South Districts.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Khadijah Iddrisu, SWOPE Project Officer, attributed lack of funds to campaign, threats from male counterparts, harassments and insults from fellow women and men, chieftaincy and political affiliations as some of the challenges that confronted women during the 2010 District Assembly Elections in the region, thereby contributing to the loss of most contestants.