Okyenhene: My advice for establishment of a university in Bunso was ignored

The Okyenhene says his advice to the former president John Mahama was premised on Bunso being in a highly strategic location: the centre of the Eastern Region.

The Okyenhene, Osagyefuo Amoatia Ofori Panin, has said he initially advised the former president John Dramani Mahama to establish the University of Environment and Sustainable Development in the Bunso area of the Eastern Region.

The Okyenhene said he had wanted the university to be established in Bunso – at the centre of the region – rather than Somanya, which is in the western part.

Speaking with Nana Yaa Mensah for Sunday Night on Asaase Radio, Osagyefuo Amoatia Ofori Panin said he had a discussion with the then Korean ambassador, who promised to help set up the university.

“I had a golf game with the Korean ambassador a few years ago and I brought him to our college. My friend Sam Jonah and I convinced him that we needed help for the expansion of the university and he promised us that he was going to do something about it.”

Okyenhene added, “So, we started talking to President Mahama and I told him that I know of the plan by his government to establish the Somanya university. And I said to him, ‘I’m not against it, but here in the Eastern Region we have also established a university that’s dealing in agriculture and environment,’ and that it would be better to look at the issue of location.

“I told him that I needed help to come and expand this one [the University College of Agriculture and Environmental Studies] in the Eastern Region and I used the location as my benefit. And that Bunso was a better location in the Eastern Region than Somanya. And I left it like that,” the Okyenhene said.

Devolve control of education

Osagyefuo Amoatia Ofori Panin wants the government to hand over the management of education to local authorities.

According to him, education would be better managed by local officials than the central government.

He set out areas of priority for decentralisation. “First of all, education; people should take charge of their education. They should know what teachers are teaching them; what curriculum is going on and how their children establish a relationship with their teachers must start from the local level.

“The board of education in Kyebi will be responsible for managing education in this area, and I can tell you, it will be much better than what the central government is doing.”

The Okyenehene said local officials currently have no control over who teaches their children, adding: “I believe that teachers are a great asset to everybody and some of them will come … and what they think they want to do is to be responsible to the central government.

“We want teachers who live here to see us as the managers or the owners of the education system, and they will be more law-abiding.”