Our president’s African award and Govt. attitude towards UG  

Jan 30, 2024 Letters

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Dear Editor,

This week I intended to comment on the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) government’s behaviour towards the University of Guyana (UG) that is very much in keeping with its approach towards all African-orientated organisations, including the International Decade for People of African Descent-Guyana, which was established by the United Nations to uplift the Africans globally, that it cannot dominate.

Then came notice of the African Prosperity Network’s intention to bestow some kind of African Global Leadership Award to President Irfaan Ali in light of Guyana’s enviable position as the fastest growing economy in the world and how that new prosperity is shared along the principles of equity and probity. The invitation was apparently from the organization’s founder and chairman Mr. Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, who also claimed that the PPP government’s emphasis of ‘the need for unity, inclusivity and shared prosperity in Guyana’s multiracial society is highly commendable.’ Had Dr. Ali written the above for himself he might have forgotten that he had successfully ‘navigated the recent peak of border tensions between Guyana and neighbouring Venezuela’!

Superficially, Guyana is now the ‘fastest growing economy in the world’ and all sorts will flock to its doors and today, particularly if one is in a nationally influentially position, it is not difficult to establish an international non-governmental organization with some reasonable level of success and to arrange awards to the politically-stressed and self-interested. So, given the history and current behaviour of the PPP towards Africans, the above kind of psychophonetic diatribe piqued my interest and I Googled ‘founder of the African Prosperity Network’ to find an answer.

Mr. Otchere-Darko is a cousin of the President of Ghana, is also the founder of the Danquah Institute, a thinktank that champions the principles and beliefs of the ruling New Patriotic Party and has become influential as a vociferous champion of his cousin’s polities against critics both internal and external to the party. The comments of a former Ghanaian Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo, went viral when Darko criticized the retired legal luminary for joining the protests to get the government to exclude pensioner bondholders from the controversial Domestic Debt Exchange. She carried a placard demanding that the government pay the yields to the pensioners because these people needed the money to purchase medicines and pay utility bills and rent. Her response to Otchere-Darko was that she would not trade insults with a ‘pin-brain’ who was merely ‘a disturbance’ (Former CJ Calls Gabby A ‘Disturbance’ https://yen.com.gh/politics/228118-sophia-akuffo-replies-gabby-otchere-darko-cj-calls-gabby-a-disturbance).

Notwithstanding the source of this extremely debasing comment, I needed to delve further and found that later in 2023, there were calls for the attorney general to investigate Mr. Otchere-Darko for his involvement in illegal mining. He was cited in a former minister’s report for allegedly influencing the release of some Chinese miners. The report claimed that Mr. Otchere-Darko was aware of the destruction his clients were engaged in and yet chose to use his privileged position to protect them and their destructive activities. According to the attorney involved in the case, the attorney general should have asked Mr. Otchere-Darko to present all the mining leases he had allegedly claimed his clients possessed during his phone call with the former minister, failing which he should be charged with ‘deceit of a public officer.’

All this sounds very familiar: all countries and races have people who simply seek opportunities where they exist regardless of the harm, they may cause. This matter is also a reminder of the part some Africans played in most of us being in the diaspora today. It is also indicative of the kind of company the PPP needs to sustain in its attempt to hoodwink the world that it has substantial African support in Guyana as it continues upon its autocratic pathway towards ethnic dominance.

What is taking place at the University of Guyana is a sufficient reminder of the PPP’s ethnic agenda. Recently, Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo is reported to have questioned the quality of the graduates coming out of the university, which the PPP government has had under its control for about three decades. In 2003, just after the PPP drive for ethnic dominance began, the late vice chancellor of UG, Professor Dennis Irvine, suggested a way forward. He argued that in the final analysis, the pre-requisites for a top-class university are top class staff and top-class facilities and that UG should make as its priority the recruitment of quality staff, the professional development of existing staff and the rehabilitation of the physical facilities, especially the library and laboratories.

According to him, ‘This is something the government should be prepared to fund, and in discussion with the relevant authorities the University should make it clear that the developments which it envisages, and which it sees as making a significant contribution to socio-economic development, will only be possible if the University has the kind of solid foundation on which to build’ (‘Higher Education and Economic Renewal-A Critique and Alternative Proposal’)

The PPP regime did quite the opposite. It set about starving the university of funds. In delivering the Dr. Dennis Irvine Lecture in 2004, I said that according to the UG 2004 audited accounts, when the GDP per capita was about US$804, it spent on average about US$1,000 per student per year and that this was a worthy effort. While Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago were spending about 64, 71 and 70 percent of GDP per capita per student, Guyana’s expenditure was about 106% of GDP per capita. Bearing in mind that the following numbers are for tertiary education and are normally biased in favour of the universities, this still meant that in dollar terms Guyana was being outspent. In 2001, Barbados spent about US$5,150, Jamaica about US$1,492 and Trinidad and Tobago about US$3,700 per student per year.

Today Guyana has a GNP of more than US$17,000 and according to a rough estimate, UG is spending less than US$2,000 per capita, but the regime is finding funds to spend almost the same amount it gives to UG on some autocratic scholarship arrangement called the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL)! This hardly reflects ‘the need for unity, inclusivity and shared prosperity in Guyana’s multiracial society’.

In passing, I note that this appears to be the second time, first time honours by these organisations, are being awarded to our president. His immediate predecessor had a predisposition to collect honorary doctoral degrees and not to be outdone, the president appears to have set his sights on the even more questionable quest of accumulating ‘honours’. Mr. President be careful, the subjective nature and the forward/backwards payments for these kinds of awards usually makes them more of a ‘disturbance’!

Regards,

Dr. Henry Jeffrey

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• African Prosperity Network, Dr Henry Jeffrey, International Decade for People of African Descent-Guyana, People’s Progressive Party (PPP), University of Guyana (UG)

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