Students Who Insulted President Must Be Well Disciplined - John Boadu

General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu has called on the education authorities not to spare the final year students caught on tape disrespecting President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Some WASSCE students, who are the first beneficiaries of the Free SHS policy, were spotted in a viral video blaming the President for their inability to write their Integrated Science paper on Monday, August 3, 2020, and therefore rained insults on him.

John Boadu, speaking on Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'', stated that such ill-bred behaviour of the students should not be entertained and therefore urged the authorities to enforce the rules governing the education system, ensuring that the students are well disciplined.

''We need to insist in being disciplined and making sure that the rules that we have used to run our schools over the years are strengthened. And if some of the tutors also fall foul of the law, we should take action on them,'' he said.

Meanwhile, the National President of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS), Alhaji Yacoub A.B. Abubarkar has indicated that any student found guilty after investigations into the incident will not go scot-free.

In an interview with Ghanaweb, he believed the students' misbehaviour is as a result of the free SHS programme.

“We actually did not expect such a thing to come out . . . sometimes when you don’t suffer to acquire certain things, the tendency is that you don’t value it until you begin to lose it. Maybe it is because of the way they had everything free throughout, there was no suffering on their part neither did their parents suffer so much as far as education is concerned,” he said.

However, he stressed that appropriate punishment will be meted out to the students.

“The parents of the students have been invited and they will be meeting the disciplinary committee to discuss the issues. Under normal circumstance, such actions should definitely attract punitive measures to serve as a deterrent to other students," he stated.