President commends Daily Graphic

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has commended the Daily Graphic, the flagship newspaper of the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL), for living up to its constitutional mandate as an independent newspaper.

He said as a state newspaper, the Daily Graphic had projected a very good image for itself through quality service to the public and the country.

President Akufo-Addo made the commendation when a delegation from the GCGL, led by the Managing Director, Mr Ato Afful, presented the winners of the Junior Graphic National Essay Competition on the Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs) to him at the Jubilee House in Accra last Tuesday.

The question for the competition was: ‘Write a letter to the President of the Republic of Ghana on how the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: Gender Equality, can be achieved”.

The competition, organised by the Junior Graphic, in partnership with BiC, the UNFPA, TLM Educational Consultants and Twellium Industries, was won by Miriam Aniwa, 14, of the Mizpah International School at Tesano, Accra.

President Akufo-Addo encouraged the team at the Daily Graphic to continue their good work.

“Continue the good work at the Daily Graphic, the state newspaper which, as much as possible, conducts itself as an independent paper. That is what the Constitution foresees, and that is what I sense coming out of the newspaper,” he said.

The GCGL delegation also included the Director in charge of News, Mrs Mavis Kitcher; the Editor of the Daily Graphic, Mr Kobby Vincent Asmah, and the Editor of the Junior Graphic, who is also the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) Journalist of the Year, Ms Doreen Hammond.

Strong statement

President Akufo-Addo, who is the co-Chair of the United Nations Eminent Group of SDG Advocates, after reading Ms Aniwa’s letter that won her the overall prize, described it as a very strong statement about female equality.

He said Ms Aniwa was going to be a big voice in the years to come and commended her for the strong expression of sentiments.

The President told the young girl that nothing would be given to her on a silver platter and that the equality she was yearning for was good but she had to fight for it, as had been the story of mankind through the ages, adding: “Any right you want to see asserted must be fought for.”

The suffragettes example

Tracing the struggles of suffragettes who fought for equal suffrage in England to the beginning of the 20th century, the President said their leaders chained themselves to the walls of Parliament as a symbol of the enslavement of women in the British society.

He said the gesture caught the imagination of people and, little by little, the campaigners gained their rights to vote.
With that reference, the President urged Ms Aniwa to cloth herself with the same kind of spirit and mentality.

Reading

He said he could judge from the letter that won the award for the schoolgirl that she had been reading widely and urged her to continue to be studious.

While emphasising the culture of reading, President Akufo-Addo said: “This is one of the things we have to promote strongly among all people, especially the young ones, the culture of reading, because that is the way of knowledge and inspiration of ideas.”

Open competition

The Managing Director of the GCGL, Mr Ato Afful, pleaded with the President that, if it was possible, the overall winner be taken to the next SDG conference for exposure and experience.

He said the essay competition was opened to all schoolchildren and the topics were published in the Junior Graphic throughout the period of the competition, so that every child in the country, irrespective of where he or she lived, would have the opportunity to participate in it.

He said more than 1,000 entries were received by the organisers, out of which 160 essays - 10 each from the 16 regions - were selected.

Mr Afful said the 10 best contestants were then selected and made to write the final essay at GCGL offices dotted around the country to ensure that the essays were written by the students themselves and not any other person.

The Managing Director said the GCGL was committed to nurturing junior talents in the country.

Fruitful collaboration

The Special Advisor to the President on the SDGs, Dr Eugene Owusu, said the collaboration with the Junior Graphic had sensitised and educated over 10,000 schoolchildren in every corner of the 16 regions on the SDGs.

He said the SDGs were about transforming the country into a richer, more peaceful and secure one, and that the goals had an inter-generational vision for societal development.

He said the SDGs Advisory Unit at the Presidency, in partnership with the Ministry of Planning and the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), intended to scale up the partnership with the GCGL to take the SDGs to as many classrooms in the country as possible.