Running away from the political?
Institutions must lead by example; assert the independence conferred on them and should not always be concerned about being politically correct.
Advertisement
The sad case of the West African Examination Council (WAEC) coming to the conclusion that a lecture regarding the shifting policy positions of governments on the number of years students in senior high school spend before sitting for the sub-regional examination amounts to a political matter and therefore should be avoided should make us begin to think hard.
In their own words, the discussion was likely to cause tensions and disagreements which the examination council did not want to be associated with.
And at this point, everyone should be worried for a number of reasons. First, it has been a complete waste of time and energy of the respected academic, Professor Kwesi Yankah. Think of it this way- you’ve been asked to deliver a lecture.
At the earliest opportunity, you dispatch your team of researchers to go to the Balme Library, the Public Records and Archives Department and other places of learning to dig for information; and while this is ongoing, you are told that all those efforts will amount to nothing because someone somewhere thinks a topic is political and is better left not discussed!
Second, as the primary assessor of the outcome of the educational system in Ghana, would WAEC not want to know how the different government policies regarding the duration of secondary education is affecting performance of students? Certainly not!
As the name suggests, the WAEC is responsible for the conduct of standardised examinations in The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
Most people within a particular age bracket would have had an encounter with the WAEC in one way or another- either through the main examinations or subsequent re-sits of the council’s examination. But for some few exceptions, it is the main pass cards to the almost all of the country’s university.
Other Trending Stories
Therefore, who sits for their examination and the process leading to their candidature should be of prime concern for the council. The council regards the matter as political and therefore would rather slide past the issue and deal with something else- less political I guess!
But should an institution such as WAEC be shy of engaging with the relevant issues of the day- even if it means that they are considered political? And what is wrong with a body such as WAEC discussing a political issue any way?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with such a discussion. In fact, WAEC should rather be telling us about the impact that the different policies are having on student performance. And even if it feared sanctions or some form of pressure, it could simply add a postscript that says that the views expressed by the speech giver does not reflect that of the Examination Council.
One of the definitions of politics I learnt from my studies is that it relates to who gets what, when and how. In order words, politics is about the authoritative allocation of resources.
So everything is political- from the quality of air you breathe, the state of your health, the quality of education, housing, communication, animal rearing and husbandry, plant breeding, furniture making, arts and craft, music, theatre, and all forms of life’s activity. Whether we continue to eat turkey tail or a particular form of meat or staple food is a political issue and yet that has not stopped us from discussing it simply because it is an election year.
Skirting around an issue simply because it is political is not the way to go. How are we going to learn and muster the courage of talking and dealing with the sensitive issues of our day if we do not start now? Like I said in my last publication, it is now time to have a frank discussion on the issues that matter to us as a nation. And such conversation must be open, brutal and fearless.
It is time to make public discourse meaningful. And there is no way this can be achieved when institutions that we look up to and in a sense is responsible for our formation fails to live up to its responsibilities. We have had enough of the window dressing and white washing of the state of affairs.
People should not be afraid of being tagged political. Institutions should not be afraid of being tag political. In fact, there is nothing wrong with being political. The most important thing is the relevance of the issues under discussion. Nothing else matters.
So for WAEC, there is nothing to be said but to urge other institutions and organisation not to follow their feeble approach to the discussion of national issues.