KNUST Bans Party Politics On Campus

Confusion nearly broke out on the campus of the Kwame Nkrumah university of Science and Technology (KNUST) on Sunday afternoon, when a supposed order from above, halted a planned meeting by the university branch of the Tertiary Education Students Confederacy (TESCON) of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

A scheduled meeting of the NPP student wing was called off when the President, Nelson Owusu Ansah, received a call from the Hall Master of Independent Hall, the venue for the meeting, telling him that an order from higher authority had instructed him to inform the TESCON members to halt the meeting.

As the students were cogitating on the supposed order from above, the TESCON president again received another call, this time form the Hall tutor, Mr. S.K. Appiah, instructing them to call off the meeting on the orders of the Vice Chancellor.

Narrating the incident to The Chronicle, the Ashanti Regional youth Organiser of the NPP, Gideon Boako, who is also a past President of TESCON, said he arrived on the campus around 3:00 p.m. to organise the students for a meeting to discuss pertinent issues concerning the way forward for the NPP, when he was informed by the local TESCON President that they had been ordered to halt the meeting.

Boako said all attempts to get the school authorities to explain further the nature of the order and where it was coming, from proved futile, as they insisted they were under instruction. The Media relations Officer of the university, Mr. Solomon Panford, told the Chronicle newspaper that it was the decision of the university administration to temporarily place a ban on political activities on campus, to ensure the smooth running of academic programmes.

The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology has in recent times become a spotlight of the media, following the ongoing sit down strike by the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG), and the subsequent verbal altercation which occurred between the Deputy Minister of Education, Dr. J.S. Jonah, and the KNUST UTAG President, Dr. Ohene Yankyera, when the latter described the former on the air waves as a liar.

Successive press conferences and counter press conferences organised by the students’ wings of both the NPP and National Democratic Congress (NDC) concerning the strike action by the teachers, further fueled the political tension on the campus, thus compelling the authorities to freeze all party political activities.