Time manager is new Mfantsipim headmaster!

On Sunday, March 2, 2014, I was privileged to have attended church service in a place I had done so continuously for seven long years, ending on Saturday,  June 2, 1979 when I finally checked out of secondary school.  

Nowadays, secondary education takes place in the same schools known today as senior high schools, and the duration has been more than halved to three years for the same purpose of preparing for tertiary training and education. As is usual in all vibrant societies, the changes in educational content and duration always provoke the most vigorous discourse on the ultimate ends of formal education; getting ready for the world of work and armed with the requisite skills and attitudes.

My interest today, however, is not on the large themes of education per se, but on the induction service I attended in Cape Coast that fateful March 2 for the new headmaster and his assistant of the only school for gentlemen in West Africa and beyond in Ghana for the past 138 years; Mfantsipim School. With some of my year group mates of MOBA 1977, we were present principally to lend moral support and encouragement and share the pride of appointment in the preferment of John Kwamina Ankomah Simpson as the new Headmaster of the best, most influential, oldest and most famous of senior high schools in this country. 

When I say the most influential, I mean every word of it. For the obvious reason that it was the very first of its kind when it was established in 1876, some products of the school have over the years distinguished themselves as headmasters and other critical teaching and administrative staff of institutions which were founded later. Which also means that the so-called traditions of other schools were simply copied from Kwabotwe, most of the time without acknowledgement! 

Let me instantiate. Messrs Chinebuah and Dadey who headed Achimota decades ago were old Mfantsipim students, just like Agbettor who headed Adisadel. Mr J. W. Abruquah, who headed Mfantipim from 1963 to 1970, was the previous head of Keta Senior High School. The founding headmaster of both Apam and Oda senior high schools was Rev. J. W. deGraft-Johnson. Products of other schools quote with pride the phrase ‘a breach of common sense is a breach of school rule’, completely unaware that this was the first rule in the amended school rules penned by our Headmaster, Rev. Robert Lockhart in 1919 or thereabouts. The African co-founder of Achimota School himself, the justly famous Dr J. E. K. Aggrey, was an old Mfantsipim student, and he was the Guest Speaker at the 50th anniversary celebrations in 1926, a year before the school he is now associated with opened its doors to students.

Even the new nomenclature of our secondary schools as senior high schools was first announced by the centenary-year Headmaster, Mr H. V. Acquaye-Baddoo, during his address in September 1976, and the Daily Graphic actually used that as the headline in covering the event the following Monday, September  22, 1976. That was 38 years ago when I was in Form 5! This is just another example of the numerous instances one can cite to back the several innovations in secondary education that was pioneered in the oldest institution of its kind in this country and later spread to others.  

As far as secondary education in Ghana is concerned, therefore, we have always been the leaven of this country and shall continue to play that role because the origins, development and sustenance of the school remain one of the truly few indigenous experiments in this country that we all can take pride in, even if one did not have the chance to personally attend the school.

‘Time Management’ is the nickname current students of the school have given to their new Headmaster, Mr J. K. A. Simpson,  because he emphasised its critical importance in everything they do in his first address as headmaster to the students late last year, hence the title of today’s column. 

Back to the induction service itself. It was obviously the biggest social event in Cape Coast that Sunday. We had two vice chancellors of public universities, both retired from their positions, in attendance. They were Professor Adarkwa-Yiadom of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and Rev. Addo-Obeng of the University of Cape Coast. They were the leading dons in a long procession of university teachers who graced the service.

I was very amused by the decision of the officiating priest, the Methodist Bishop of Cape Coast, the Rt Rev. Nicholas Asane, to shake the hands of final year students of the school and wish them well in their examinations in lieu of the sacrament they could not partake in because the elements had ran out! I am sure this ecclesiastical handshake would be of benefit as they write their examinations.

When it was time to sing the school hymn, number 832 from the Methodist Hymn Book, the new headmaster’s classmate, Timothy Andoh, now Master of Mensah-Sarbah Hall of the Music Department of the University of Ghana and a former school organist in our time, took over the organ. I complained to him afterwards that he declined to open the full diapason stop to wash the whole Kwabotwe hill in the nostalgic music. He replied that the new Japanese organs really don’t have the features associated with real pipe organs such as the one in the school installed in 1935, a gift from the Englishman, Edmund Sykes Lamplough, then the Vice President of the British Methodist Church.

Mr Simpson is the 13th Ghanaian head of the school. He was the headmaster of Wenchi Methodist Senior High School and assistant headmaster for academic affairs in Mfantsipim before going to Wenchi. He follows other illustrious headmasters such as Adam Wright, Joseph Casely Hayford, Kobena Fynn Egyir Asaam, Francis Bartels, Joseph Abruquah, O. K. Monney, B. K. Dontwi, Victor Ashun and Kofi Miezah as he begins his term of office. He is now the lead headmaster in this country, offering a leadership rich in tradition and achievement.  He cannot but, like his predecessors, succeed in his new, well-earned position. 

His excellent resume contained a little fact that actually prompted today’s column.  I found out, to my delight, that he was a Friday Bible class leader in the Calvary Methodist Church in the Cape Coast suburb that bears the same name as this column, Abura. Of course the Abura in Cape Coast is different from the State of Abura just about 10 miles north of the municipality, but I am sure there would be a link between the suburb and the traditional area.

In the name of all his classmates of MOBA 77, I wholesomely and unreservedly congratulate this fine educationist and Christian gentleman who has assumed the headship of Mfantsipim School.