Stop this practice - Prof. Addae Mensah tells universities

Accra, Oct 26, GNA - Professor Ivan Addae-Mensah, Chairman of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), has condemned the use of student's application form numbers as final examination ID numbers saying the systems leads to fraudulent acts.

The practice, he said, opened the system to examinations fraud and asked the universities to stop it.

He cited an example of how an applicant into the University of Ghana (UG) Legon was denied admission but weaved his way into the system and wrote the final examinations because his application number was recorded in the system as one of the final examinations ID numbers. Prof. Addae-Mensah, who was a former Vice Chancellor of the UG, made the remark at the 11th in a series of monthly Golden Jubilee Lectures. The topic for the lecture, which was also the second this month, was "Ethical Issues in Education and the Future of our Youth." He mentioned some of the ethical issues as forged examination results, cheating in examinations, parents paying money to lecturers and other university staff to alter the results of the wards, impersonation during examinations and parents buying a place from the wards who did not qualify.

Prof. Addae-Mensah noted that examination fraud alone was eroding the high international reputation Ghana used to enjoy, saying that currently academic institutions abroad tend to scrutinize certificates and degrees awarded from Ghana more stringently due to the many reports of exams fraud in Ghanaian schools.

"Between 2002 and 2007, 155 students were expelled from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) for entering the university with fake secondary school exams results and 113 were sacked from the UG for similar offences within the same period," he said. He said at least 68 secondary schools including those on the top of the ladder and those at the bottom were all guilty of committing such fraud to enable their students to get admission into the universities.

Prof. Addae-Mensah particularly mentioned highly reputed secondary schools like Mfansipim and Achimota Schools, Legon Presec, Adisadel College, Prempeh College, Opoku Ware Secondary School, Bishop Herman School, Mfantiman Girls which had fallen into the problem. "The Ashanti Region was found out to have the highest number of culprits and the Western Region had the lowest," he said.

He noted that the trend confirmed research findings that the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) examinations slips and certificates could easily be tampered with and forged without detection. He was worried that in most of the cases, parents had induced some supposedly responsible persons in the school's administration to alter the results of their wards, saying that practice raised major moral and ethical questions, especially with respect to its impact on the youth. "When parents pay their wards way through the academic education system, we only end up raising a generation of academically highly educated but morally and ethically bankrupt youth," he said. "A highly educated person without morals and respect is not an asset to they nation."

He said the breakdown in the moral systems in schools had led to a generation of educated people who did not have respect for the norms of society and thereby lived isolated lifestyles, which were not commensurate with the ethics of society.

Prof. Addae-Mensah noted that most of the students caught and expelled from the UG during his tenure as Vice Chancellor offered courses in Economics, Finance, Banking and Statistics, saying that it was worrying that such persons would have gained opportunity into offices where they would have handled financial matters of corporate bodies or the state.

"This is how come we have very learned corrupt people in society who embezzle state and company funds and are able to cover their tracks very efficiently because they have the knowhow. "The type of educated people we are raising today gives a negative connotation to the saying that the pen is mightier than the sword because now the educated use the pen to run our economy down through corruption instead of the sword," he said. Prof. Addae-Mensah said it was not surprising therefore that people who exposed corruption in public office were threatened with murder whiles society rather made heroes of persons who made money fraudulently.

He urged university authorities to take a close look at admissions for courses that dealt with finance administration to prevent potentially unethical and morally bankrupt persons from offering such courses.

He said at the universities, some of those found wanting included married persons who were students, wards of highly placed persons in society, lecturers and in particular case at the UG, someone had become a minister of state at the time his fraud waa discovered.

Prof. Addae-Mensah also expressed worry about media reports of some Ghanaian university students trafficking drugs abroad, saying, in the past, the universities had cause to question why some students spent longer periods on holidays abroad than they were usually given. "They usually make their colleagues do assignment for them for a fee and they return to school with cars and luxurious items just to show off," he said.

Prof. Addae-Mensah appealed to parents to desist from paying their children's way through academic education and rather challenge, motivate and guide them into achieving success through hard work. He told the youth that, "whatever you do please stay away from drugs."

Nana Kwabena Nketiah, Paramount Chief of Esikado in the Central Region, who presided said though the youth in pre-independence Ghana, during the 1940s and 50s were relatively less educated they used their little education to pursue freedom for all from the imperialists and colonialists.

"It is unfortunate that our young educated leaders today use their academic prowess to rather create economic problems leaving the younger generation largely on the streets selling dog chains, pushing trucks and working as porters," he said.

He expressed disgust at a trend he called "younger people today look more English than the English themselves" and yet they were supposed to have been liberated from British colonial lifestyles. Nana Nketiah blamed the trend on the media, saying that the media should focus more on promoting the African image, morals and ethical values and drive the youth towards that. 26 Oct. 07