A Senior lecturer at the
University for Development Studies (UDS), Dr. Michael Ayamga Adongo has taken
on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo over his latest decision to name the
Navrongo campus of the UDS after C. K. Tedam, the late Chairman of the Council
of Elders of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).
The Development Economist advises the President against what
he termed as honour grabbing adding with the renaming of national assets after
deserving citizens without broader consultation.
President Akufo-Addo at the weekend, announced that the
Navrongo Campus of the University for Development Studies would soon be named
after C. K. Tedam.
He revealed at the burial service last Saturday that a bill
would be laid and soon passed by the current parliament to create an autonomous
university out of the Navrongo campus of the University for Development Studies
which would be named after C. K. Tedam.
“Once the processes are completed, it would be referred to as
the C. K. Tedam University of Technology and Applied Sciences in honour and
memory of this great Ghanaian” he said.
But in reaction to this, Dr. Michael Ayamga Adongo said “Stop
the honour grabbing. It is good to name national assets after deserving
citizens but such actions must be informed by wide consultations and broader
consensus. The partisan and veiled ethnocentric approach we are witnessing in
Ghana today will eventually bring dishonour to those we sought to honour
especially when such actions are reversed.
I am more alarmed by the grabbing of university names as if
we were sharing sacrificial meat to clans in a frafra funeral. Universities are
international entities and they must be named after people with big footprints
on the global stage. Naming a University after a local fisherman is like
putting a veil on the University.
Name a University after Kofi Annan and you open doors to the
University. More disturbing is the geographical choice of institutions.
National heroes can be honoured with monuments anywhere in the country. The decision
to use institutions in the home regions of the so-called heroes speaks volumes
of the orientation of the current dispensation.
Some of my former students just became lawyers so in
congratulating them, I say “I rest my case”.
Source : Ghanaweb.com
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