Former President John Dramani Mahama, the Flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), says an NDC government in 2025 will restore the original names of public Universities to reflect the purpose for their establishment.
He said the New Patriotic Party government had not built any University in the country, but only renamed Universities built by the NDC government, “All the NPP knows how to do is to rename Universities that people have built.
“So after NDC builds a University, then they will give it a name of one of their heroes.
“We are going to rename the Universities. Ghana has many heroes and not only the heroes of the NPP tradition,” he said.
Mr Mahama said this when he addressed women and youth groups, chiefs, farmers and students at a community engagement at Zuarungu in the Bolgatanga East District of the Upper East Region.
The NDC’s Flagbearer was on a two-day tour of the Region, dubbed “Building Ghana Tour” to interact with citizens and solicit their inputs to enable the Party draft its manifesto for this year’s Presidential and Parliamentary elections.
He said administration blocks, hostels, libraries could be named after people, but the names of public Universities must reflect their core mandate, “And so we will restore the original names, and the names that they have given them, will be given to a significant infrastructure in the Universities.
“We will add other people and name the infrastructure in the Universities after them. But if the University is University for Development Studies, that is its core mandate. It will be called the University for Development Studies,” he said.
On the Free Senior High School (FSHS) policy, Mr Mahama, emphasized that “I am not going to cancel Free SHS. I am going to make it better. I am going to improve it, so we get the full benefits of Free SHS.”
He said an NDC government under his leadership would work to abolish the double-track system, “We will go back to a three-term system. So that our children will go to school at the same time and vacate at the same time.”
He added that feeding grants for students in SHS would be decentralized to allow Head teachers to contract local food contractors in their Districts and buy food for their students.
That, he said would help the farmers in the local area as the food contractors in the area would buy groundnuts, maize, millet and animals from the farmers to feed students in their local SHSs.
Mr Mahama said the idea of farms in SHSs would be revived, “When we were in Secondary School, all our schools had farms. We had maize and rice farms and they were harvested and used to cook for us. We kept cattle, we had poultry farms and they used to bring eggs from there to improve our food.
“Aside from that, the schools can sell the excess in other to make money to supplement the development needs of the schools,” the NDC’s Flagbearer said.
Mr Mahama was in the company of Mr James Agalga, the leader of the Minority Caucus in Parliament and Member of Parliament (MP) for the Builsa North Constituency, Dr Dominic Akuritinga Ayine, MP for the Bolgatanga East Constituency and Mr Isaac Adongo, MP for Bolgatanga Central Constituency.
Other notable MPs were Mr Cletus Apul Avoka, MP for the Zebilla Constituency, Mr Mahama Ayariga, MP for Bawku Central Constituency, Mr Edward Abambire Bawa, MP for Bongo, Dr Clement Apaak, MP for the Builsa South Constituency among other government appointees.
