The future of a final year student of Sekondi College in the Western Region has been left in the balance after he was caught on camera spewing some derogatory words to the president of the land.
The student, together with other students of other secondary schools have been punished and barred from writing this years WAEC examination over what the Ghana Education Service (GES) describes as indiscipline in our schools.
In a statement released to the media, the GES identified the Sekondi College students who insulted the president and dismissed them from the school and barred them from writing their current exams in the school. The GES failed to state the remedy for the students and or their families to get their acts right and get a new exams center in time to help the young lad continue his examination.
This action by GES clearly shows we live in a country where laws and rules are implemented differently, probably based on your class, wealth or political affiliation.
In 2013, MP for Ablekuma South , Ursula Owusu used unprintable words on a sitting president. She called former president Mahama a theif with no evidence and facts to support her claim. She went further to labeled the Electoral Commission thieves who had collaborated and conspired to steal the election for Mahama in 2012. Funny enough, the same electoral commission, with the same procedures announced the sitting president as the winner of the 2016 election.
When given the opportunity to apologise, Ursula Owusu, unlike the little boy from Sekondi College, who understood his words were unacceptable in our society and apologised, failed to render an apology to the president and was gifted a ministerial appointment when Akufo Addo came into office.
Same insults. Same democratic country but different results. In the same year, 2013, Ace Kojo Annan Ankomah, a legal practitioner, who has been accused of benefiting from his association with the current government and gained jobs for his firm from the Npp government argued it was no crime to insult the president to which we deduce does not attract punishment.
Its a shame that GES will allow itself to be used to perpetuate an irregularity that shouldn’t exist in the first place. If the president found Ursula Owusu insults on the former president worth a ministerial appointment, the little chap of Sekondi College who is still developing and attaining maturity deserves pardon and not stricter punishment. Its synonymous to killing an ant with a sledgehammer (j.a.kuffour).
