I. C. Quaye's day of "near shame"

While several government officials were traveling around the country busying themselves with monitoring how the “my first day at school” program was going, others decided to use the occasion to do politics.

One such official is the Greater Accra Regional Minister, Sheik I.C. Quaye who for political propaganda reasons delayed the start of his programme for more than four hours because the TV cameras had not arrived to capture his achievements at the schools to be visited. He was accompanied by a bus load of praise singing supporters.

At the Alajo basic school where he waited for hours just for TV coverage, the minister promised the school children that he would soon be commissioning the new classroom block HE constructed for the school. He also told the children (all of them below voting age) that the school would receive more development if the New Patriotic Party government is voted back to power.

Shiek I. C. Quaye was however embarrassed at the dilapidated nature of two of the three classroom blocks at the Pig-Farm basic school. Obviously unaware of the situation and embarrassed the minister took a piece of chalk and wrote on the chalkboard in the deplorable structure “I have come to see and will take immediate action.”

Surprisingly, a few minutes after writing this sentence the minister probably out of the political excitement from the praise singing from the supporters told the school authorities and pupils that he has already awarded the contract for the construction of a new classroom block to replace the rickety and collapsing wooden structure.

His bus load of praise singing supporters showered praises and appellations in songs amidst drumming and dancing. With the songs flowing, drums sounding and horns taunting, the otherwise non-partisan “my first day at school” became reminiscent of a political campaign platform mounting with shouts of “Kufuor nie, I.C. nie” slogan.