Your 200 Schools Pledge Yielded 48, Your 100 Schools In 90 Days Can Only Be A Pipe Dream!

John Mahama, clueless on what to tell the Ghanaian electorate as he desperately seeks to win their hearts, has been mooching around, promising to construct bridges at places where there are no rivers or streams.

With Akufo-Addo's Free SHS policy giving him nightmarish dreams, Mr Mahama, a few days ago indicated that he would review the policy to better it within 90 days upon the assumption of office if Ghanaians vote for him.

Sensing that this pledge verges on the ludicrous as a result of the barrage of criticisms and condemnations heaped on him, the NDC has been struggling to do a damage control.

The General Secretary of the party, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, in his burgeoning desire to deaden the negative impacts resulting from Mahama's insincere pledge to review the Free SHS policy which many understand is to collapse it, has put forward a proposition that rather worsens Mahama's plight.

General Mosquito, as he is popularly referred to, has emphatically stated that within 90 days of their administration if they are voted for, 100 new schools will be constructed to do away with the scarcity of accommodation in the senior high schools. He stated that this would kill the Double Track system currently in session.

Communicators and the top echelons of the opposition party have been singing this song of putting up more buildings to sweep the Double Track away. Asiedu Nketia is reinforcing this impracticable solution with his advanced position.

The promise to construct 100 new schools within Mahama's 90 days time frame is wobble in so many ways. As a matter of fact, well-meaning Ghanaians, upon hearing this, have got pigged off.

Our system is such that no government can award contracts for the construction of 100 schools within 90 days because there are checks and balances that need to be looked at. We have procurement to deal with, and not even restricted tendering or sole sourcing can weather this storm.

Moreover, where would the money come from for a new government to use to build these phantom schools? A school system worth its salt would not take less than five months to be put up. You can't simply build 100 schools in three months even if you have the best of experts in building.

One important ingredient we cannot lose sight of is the NDC's own record in relation to constructing schools. Mahama promised to construct 200 schools in 4 years. Out of the 200 promised schools, just 48 were completed.

With the benefit of hindsight, a government that said it would build 200 schools in 1,460 days could come up with a paltry 48. How can these same people construct 100 schools within 90 days? This is an impossible dream!

The 100 schools within 90 days pledge is pitched at the electorate and it is just to hoodwink them into voting for Mahama and the NDC. Even Asiedu Nketia's children know that this pledge is not only a wishful thinking but a grand attempt at building castles in the air.

If nakedness promises you with clothes, do well to ask of his name. This damage control strategy has been drown in its own illogicality.

P.K. Sarpong, Whispers from the Corridors of the Thinking Place.