Partisan politics infiltrating students leadership worrying - Prof Oduro

Professor George Oduro, the immediate past Pro Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast (UCC) has called on students leaders to remain committed to their core mandate and resist all attempts to infiltrate their rank with partisan politics.

He noted that the habitual politicization of all issues in Ghana was not merely a concocted perception but a veritable phenomenon with serious implications on developmental priorities and policy strategy.

"Politics is not inevitably bad but the often needless politicization of every issue at the expense of strategic prioritization of national development dogmas must be discouraged”.

Speaking at a 'leadership dialogue' organised by the Atlantic FM, a UCC campus broadcaster on Wednesday, the former Pro Vice Chancellor further charged students leaders to move beyond partisan interests and focus on the quality dimensions of all initiatives of national interest as that would hold individuals together as one people aiming for a common goal.

Students’ leadership is gradually taking a turn to partisan politics and in the process shifting its main objectives and goals to improve the lot of the student body.

According to Prof. Oduro, currently, issues of interest to the general student body were overly analysed, criticised and thrown to the bin because those ideas and thoughts sometimes came from colleague opposing students who may not share their leadership style and political orientation.

“The practice, is a bad start and a threat to the Nation's development”, he indicated.

Buttressing his views, he stated that "destroying a nation does not require the use of bombs, it only requires lowering the quality of education, then, patients die in the hands of doctors, buildings collapse in the hands of engineers, truth is killed in the hands of judges, and money lost in the hands of accountants."

"Students leaders must see things from the lenses of students and for political orientation, everybody has a choice but that should not affect their sense of analysing typical national issues," he added.

He underlined the need for tolerance, harmony and peaceful co-existence among student leaders and the entire student population devoid of character assassination and political machinations that were geared towards terrorising people of different political persuasions.

"Let us collectively build in tandem and raise the standards and progress we would want to see in our Universities other than allow political orientation to take our minds off what could do us well."

He encouraged the youth and all students leaders to work hard to move the nation and various universities forward through hardwork, strategic planning, humility, tolerance, respect for human rights and individual differences.