By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Ms. Akua Sena Dansua’s alleged lamentation over the 4-year duration of Ghana’s secondary educational system denying women the right to early marriage is, to be certain, far less rankling to me than her very call for the already woefully inadequate 4-year high-school curriculum to be reviewed and possibly reduced by a year (MyJoyOnline.com 5/30/09).

Still, it would be quite interesting to learn from Ms. Dansua, the National Democratic Congress’ Minister for Women and Children’s Affairs, precisely what makes “early marriage” (or teen marriage) of women so indispensable that such patently unsavory customary practice, largely observed among rural folk and the urban poor, ought to be encouraged at the expense of Ghana’s 4-year senior high school system?

Maybe somebody needs to alert this evidently anti-feminist Women and Children’s Affairs minister that, on the whole, the practice of having young Ghanaian women prematurely committed into loveless marriages has, overwhelmingly, been responsible for the acute economic misery and general hardship that many among our womenfolk continue to endure, relative to their men.

Furthermore, it is a well-known fact that in most instances of early marriages, the overriding factor is invariably economic, at least from the perspective of the brides’ families, rather than either the physical and emotional well-being and/or intellectual, psychological and cultural development of the young women who, given time and appropriate (and/or requisite) resources, could be made more economically viable and productive members of society.

And so it is not quite clear exactly what Ms. Dansua seeks to gain for Ghanaian womenfolk, and our society at large, with such regressive ideas vis-à-vis our high school curriculum and the morally and culturally regressive tradition of teenage marriage for unfortunate Ghanaian women.

Then also must be promptly pointed out the fact that the overwhelming majority of early marriages, quite predictably, fail; and since one does not facilely suppose that the Women and Children’s Affairs minister intends the marriages of these teenage women to, almost invariably end in failure, with their concomitant misery for the innocent children born to couples involved in these ill-advised marriages, it stands to reason that the basis of Ms. Dansua’s observation, perforce, lies elsewhere; otherwise, she may be desperately calling for President Atta-Mills to seriously rethink his decision pertaining to Ms. Dansua’s induction into membership of his cabinet.

It may also come as both quite a surprise, on the one hand, and purely déjà vu, on the other, for many of our readers to learn that Ms. Akua Sena Dansua is not the very first member, or the first woman, of her family to be named a cabinet minister. She is the sister – by the same mother but different fathers – of Ms. Elizabeth Ohene, the former New Patriotic Party (NPP) minister for Tertiary Education. And it is on the latter score that the “surprise” hinted at, at the beginning of this paragraph comes in. The déjà-vu part, of course, deals with the fact that like Ms. Ohene, Ms. Dansua is fast and undesirably becoming a controversial political figure.

The irony here, though, inheres in the fact of Ms. Dansua’s sister having vigorously both championed and role-modeled the academic and professional development of Ghanaian women while placed in a similar position of public trust.

Already, some of her most ardent critics have started wondering how it came about, at all, that Ms. Akua Sena Dansua was given charge of a ministerial portfolio for which she appears to be the least qualified. Such critics may have to be forgiven for exhibiting such gross, imperious and crass hypocrisy; for such query fatuously suggests, somehow, that Mr. Jeremiah John Rawlings demonstrated any genius flair for governance, whatsoever, for the latter to have self-righteously dictated policy and destiny to Ghanaians during the two harrowing decades that the former flight-lieutenant of the Ghana Air Force occupied the old slave castle at Osu.

The fact remains, however, that the people whom we both appoint and elect to positions of public trust are fallible like every one of us! And so for anybody to pretend that Ms. Dansua is the worst Ghanaian to ever hold a cabinet portfolio is tantamount an egregiously unpardonable case of steely stupidity on the part of her critics. At any rate, have any of these smug critics so shortly and suddenly forgotten the bumbling likes of Messrs. Tony Aidoo and Kwamena Bartels?

Ms. Dansua also, reportedly, claims that she made other cogent arguments regarding the need for the duration of Ghana’s senior high school system to be reduced from 4 to 3 years that are being conveniently ignored by the Ghanaian media. I doubt very much that any critically and constructively thinking citizen of Ghana could, indeed, make any “cogent” or practically realistic argument, whatsoever, in favor of the NDC government systematically vitiating our currently woefully inadequate system of secondary education.

The latter issue, needless to say, is something that our substantive Minister of Education ought to be vigorously selling, if, indeed, Mr. Enyo believes in the salutary development of the country at large.

For me, personally, the seedy quality of Ghanaian education grimly registers itself anytime that I am bombarded with e-mails from Ghanaian readers, bitterly complaining about their woeful inability to comprehend my rather basic, even if unapologetically academic, usage of the English language. Some also gripe about the “tedious and boring” lengths of my articles, woefully and pathetically failing to recognize the fact of my target-audience being one with great love for the felicitous nuances of language and diction, rather than your average, barely literate run-of-the-mill partially “schooled,” as opposed to “educated,” Ghanaian reader.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Crosscurrents” (Atumpan Publications/Lulu.com, 2008), his 15th and latest volume of poetry. E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com. ###