DISCREDITING PROFESSORSHIP: BY ABENA OSEGU BOATENG

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Some of those who bear the title Professor discredit it by their utterances and behaviour. They say and do things which suggest that they have emptied their heads of all things which portray knowledge and sense.

The current Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana bears the title of Professor and he never let’s go of it.

However, his recent statement on the Government’s agenda to build 111 hospitals in the country within the next four years, reveals him as an empty headed political zealot ready to crash any criticism of the Akufo-Addo regime. Indeed, NPP serial callers would envy his stout defence of the so-called Agenda 111 initiative.

Rt. Rev. Professor J.O.Y Mante, who members of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana accept as their leader, told a gathering of the faithful and the public somewhere in the Central Region that, only witches and wizards can criticize Agenda 111. 

Waooooo!

In response to this holy outrage from the pulpit, Alhaji A.B.A Fuseini said that he prefers being a wizard to being an unprincipled Professor in cassock.

In announcing Agenda 111, His Excellency President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, claimed that each of the 111 hospitals would cost the Ghanaian taxpayer US$16.7 million. He also announced that his government has so far committed only US$100 million to the project.

Even primary school kids can divide 100 by 16.7 and if they do that it will reveal that money so far allocated to the Agenda 111 project cannot build more than five hospitals. Kids who do this very simple division and ask questions about how funds can be raised to finance Agenda 111, instantly become witches and wizards by the standard of Rt. Rev. Professor Mante.

18 years ago, the Government of Ghana started the rehabilitation of the Police hospital in Accra and it has not been completed. People who ask the legitimate question of how the rehabilitation of a hospital cannot be completed in 18 years but government can plan to complete the building of 111 whole brand new hospitals in four years immediately become wizards and witches by the definition of Rt. Rev. Professor Mante.

The holy man of God insists that those who point out that the President cut the sod for the commencement of the Agenda 111 project at the same place where the Minister of Health cut sod, one year ago for a hospital project and nothing happened are witches and wizards.

If you do not want to be a witch or wizard, please don’t refer to the fact that one full year after pulling down the La Polyclinic to build a modern hospital in its place, nothing has happened and what used to house a clinic is now a playground for kids.

Professor Mante is seeing witches and wizards all over the place and we have to be very careful. If we make the mistake of pointing out what is factual, we may be confined to the witches’ home at Gambaga or lynched by persons who have the Professor’s type of brain.

God help this Rt. Rev. Professor!