Author: Seth J. Bokpe

In 2021, the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) expressed concerns about violations in the appointment of university retirees to substantive positions.

 “The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) has noted with concern the increasing appointment of post-retirement contract staff into various offices in Public Funded Higher Education Institutions (PFHEI).

“Further, PFHEIs are to note that persons who are re-engaged after retirement, subject to permission, cannot be assigned ‘position holding’ roles nor draw allowances due a person still in active service,” GTEC said in a letter dated June 8, 2021, and signed by its Deputy Director-General, Dr. Ahmed Jinapor Abdulai.

The GTEC, formerly known as the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) and the National Accreditation Board (NAB), also issued a strong order in that letter.

“The Integrated Personnel Payroll Department (IPPD) and Budget Department of the Commission [are] by a copy of this letter directed not to process the emoluments of any post-retired staff without the requisite evidence after August 1, 2021.”

The order was served on vice-chancellors, registrars and finance directors of universities across the country. But one of the recipients of the letter, Professor Eric Magnus Wilmot, is a university retiree who has been holding a substantive top position as Vice-Chancellor of the C.K. Tedam University of Technology and Applied Sciences (CKT-UTAS) since 2020.

Previously known as the Navrongo Campus of the University for Development Studies (UDS), CKT-UTAS became autonomous in April 2020.

Prof. Wilmot retired from UCC and was appointed Vice-Chancellor

Prof. Wilmot retired voluntarily in 2019 from the University of Cape Coast (UCC), where he was the Provost of the College of Education Studies for three years.

In 2020, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo granted him an interim appointment for only one year as vice-chancellor for the CKT-UTAS. The interim appointment was due to elapse in July 2021.

But before the appointment elapsed, the university’s governing council issued its own appointment to Prof. Wilmot, giving him four years to serve further as vice-chancellor.

The post-retirement appointment of Prof. Wilmot as vice-chancellor, who turned 60 years on April 28, 2022, took effect on September 1, 2020. It is due to elapse on 31st August 2024― when he will be more than 62 years.

The appointment made by the council is contrary to rules governing such appointments in public universities in Ghana.

Checks by The Fourth Estate have revealed that Prof. Wilmot has been drawing salaries and allowances since his post-retirement appointment as vice-chancellor.

He received all his entitlements when he retired from the UCC three years ago. He is also entitled to more benefits when he retires for a second time by 2024 per the conditions of his post-retirement service at the CKT-UTAS.

The vice-chancellor is not the only person who has been given a substantive appointment that transcends the 60th birthday at the CKT-UTAS.

Registrar retired from KNUST

The Registrar of CKT-UTAS, Dr. Vincent A. Ankamah-Lomotey, is a former deputy registrar of the College of Science at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

While he was serving as a deputy registrar at the KNUST, President Akufo-Addo gave him an interim appointment in 2020 for one year as the registrar of the CKT-UTAS. He was a little over 59 years at the time, with barely a year to hit the mandatory retirement age of 60.

Months before the one-year interim appointment was to elapse in July 2021, the school’s governing council offered him a four-year appointment.

He, too, will go home with some benefits when he retires again.

Both the retiree vice-chancellor and the registrar are no longer serving the president’s one-year interim appointments, which elapsed in July 2021. They are currently serving in substantive positions on the full-term appointments issued by the governing council contrary to the rule.

Reactions from Vice-Chancellor and Registrar

When The Fourth Estate engaged the vice-chancellor on the post-retirement appointment, he said no rule had been broken.

“This letter is about those who remain to continue working after 60. It’s not about conditions for the appointment of foundation vice-chancellors or registrars. So, you are referencing a wrong letter [or] regulation,” he said.

The Fourth Estate drew his attention to the contents of the GTEC’s letter― specifically the portions where the letter says persons who are re-engaged after retirement cannot be assigned ‘position holding’ roles nor draw allowances due a person still in active service. Asked if the letter did not apply to him given that he had already retired and was occupying a substantive office at a public university under the same GTEC, he declined to answer that question.

And when he was asked if he did not see anything wrong in drawing salaries and allowances from a public office today after he had gone on retirement at a different public university and taken all his retirement benefits, he said he deserved his current post-retirement earnings.

“Why should I? I’m performing the role. I have to be paid commensurate salaries and allowances.  What is wrong with that? There is nothing wrong,” he said.

On his part, the registrar told The Fourth Estate he did not apply for the job. He said he accepted the position after he received an invitation from the Ministry of Education to “come and serve”.

“I did not apply for any job. I was sitting somewhere in Kumasi when I got a call from the minister’s office, that the minister said I should come to Accra because they were going to inaugurate governing councils of three new universities.

“So, I asked the lady, ‘I am confused because I didn’t apply for any job’. I consulted my friends. They said, ‘Well, this is  a national call; you need to heed’. So, I agreed,” he said.

On why he accepted the four-year term of a registrar when he was less than a year to hit his retirement age of 60, he said the governing council and the GTEC would be better placed to answer that.

Governing Council fails to provide evidence of due process

Per the convention, after the search party has been set up, the the vacancy is advertised locally and internationally. When interested persons apply, the search party does a shortlisting. Then, the shortlisted candidates are invited and interviewed.

Subsequently, the search panel comes up with the results and selects only the top two among the interviewed candidates. The top two are then presented to the university’s governing council to decide which of the two finalists should be the vice-chancellor.

Finally, the entire university is officially notified of the appointment of the new vice-chancellor through a circular. The same procedure applies in appointing a registrar.

The appointments of Prof. Wilmot and the registrar reportedly did not follow the normal. But the Chairman of the Governing Council of CKT-UTAS, Prof. Gordon A. Awandare, told The Fourth Estate that they followed the normal procedure.

Asked why such appointments were issued contrary to GTEC’s post-retirement appointment requirements, Prof. Awandare said the former Minister for Education, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, gave the approval after he asked for the minister’s advice “when the ages of Professor Wilmot and the registrar became an issue”.

Prof. Awandare further backed the council’s decision by making reference to President Akufo-Addo’s appointment of Martin Amidu as a special prosecutor after his retirement age.

The Fourth Estate asked Prof. Awandare for evidence that the CKT-UTAS’ governing council followed due process in appointing Prof. Wilmot as vice-chancellor― aside from the issues of his post-retirement appointment and extension of the appointment beyond his 60th birthday. He did not provide any.

The GTEC’s Director-General, Prof. Mohammed Salifu, wrote an approval letter to the governing council for the four-year appointments of Prof. Wilmot and Dr. Ankamah-Lomotey as vice-chancellor and registrar respectively at the request of the former education minister.

But when The Fourth Estate contacted Prof. Salifu on September 30, 2022, he said he was not aware that Prof. Wilmot had gone on retirement at the UCC prior to his appointment as vice-chancellor at the CKT-UTAS.

Both Prof. Salifu and Prof. Awandare said the four-year appointments of Prof. Wilmot and Dr. Ankamah-Lomotey were issued because the school was new.

However, checks show there are other equally new universities where governing councils, following the rule, have not offered any appointments that go beyond the age of 60 years.

An example is CKT-UTAS’ counterpart in the Upper West Region, formerly known as the UDS Wa Campus. That university became autonomous in the same year as the CKT-UTAS and changed its name to SD Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies (SDD-UBIDS). The school’s governing council followed due process in regularising the appointment of its current vice-chancellor, Prof. Philip Duku Osei. When Prof. Osei’s one-year interim appointment as vice-chancellor elapsed in 2021, the governing council offered him a fresh appointment that is not going beyond his 60th birthday. The university’s Governing Council Chairman, Kwaku Yamoah Painting, confirmed this to The Fourth Estate.

Former education minister denies breaking the rule

It is alleged that Prof. Salifu and the CKT-UTAS Governing Council acted under intense political pressure in the appointments. When The Fourth Estate contacted the former Education Minister, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, he said his role in the four-year appointments did not break any rules.

“If such an appointment was made in an official capacity, why ask me? So, seeking my advice because this is a nascent university broke which rule? My advice was sought and [I] acted within the legal system,” said Dr Opoku Prempeh.

But stating his position on the matter, a retired UDS pro-vice-chancellor, Prof. David Millar, said the appointments were in breach of the rule and did not follow the normal practice.

Prof. Millar, however, said the four-year substantive appointments issued by the governing council did not follow the procedure of appointing vice-chancellors and registrars in Ghana.

“Where there is no chancellor, the president is the chancellor of that university. In the case of CKT-UTAS, the president is the chancellor. He has the prerogative to appoint the vice-chancellor, but he is unlikely to extend it. Very unlikely. Such appointments normally are on a short-term contract, not more than two years. You are given specific deliverables; then, you exit after a short time.

“When you want a vice-chancellor, you would put up a search party. But I know, for those people (Prof. Wilmot and Dr. Ankamah-Lomotey) there were no search parties. You see, already the main rule has been broken in that light. And when you put a search party there, you ask for a lot more applicants. It should also be advertised locally and internationally. That was not done. So, these are not normal appointments,” Prof. Millar stated.

Finance Ministry under pressure, opposes Post-retirement Appointments

As some public-university retirees still occupy substantive positions in the country and continue to draw salaries and allowances due only staff in active service, the Ministry of Finance does not conceal how it struggles to provide extra funds every month to pay retirees enjoying extra years in substantive offices.

On August 5, 2022, the ministry wrote to public institutions, highlighting the government’s inability to grant financial clearance for post-retirement contract appointments.

“Please, refer to the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy which has been submitted and approved by Parliament for the 2022 fiscal year. The Ministry of Finance wishes to inform Heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies [MDAs] and Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) of some Expenditure Policy Measures as outlined in the 2022 Budget Statement.

“Paragraph 324 of the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy states ‘Government has, with immediate effect, suspended the granting of approval for Post-Retirement Contract Appointments, except in cases where the skills of the retiring officer are in short supply and unavoidably needed’.

In view of this, we are unable to grant financial clearance for Post-Retirement Contract Appointment at this stage. Please, treat as urgent,” said the letter signed by Deputy Minister for Finance, Abena Osei Asare, for the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta.

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Speakers at a forum organised by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) on asset declaration by public office holders and the fight against corruption in Ghana say the lack of sanctions is responsible for the non-compliance of the asset declaration to the law by many public office holders.

“I find it so disappointing that when public declaration by President Nana Akufo-Addo was challenged by the MFWA and information was put out there, nothing was done,” said the Executive Director of the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition, Beauty Emefa Narteh.

The forum was organised by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) following a series of publications by The Fourth Estate which revealed that many ministers, parliamentarians, and other government officials failed to declare their assets as mandated by the law.

The Fourth Estate’s Findings

Information obtained by The Fourth Estate shows that out of the 127 ministers who served in President Akufo-Addo’s first term (2017-2021), only 27 people fully complied with the law. This means only 21% of the ministers and deputy ministers declared their assets and liabilities.

In the president’s second term, 50 out of the 87 ministerial appointees (representing 57%) have complied with the law.

For the Mahama administration (2013-2017), only 39 out of the 102 ministers (including reshuffled and resigned ones), fully complied with the law, representing a compliance rate of 34%

For the sixth parliament (2013-2017), 20 out of 275 MPs (7.2%) fully declared their assets.

 In the current (eighth) parliament, 95 MPs out of 275 have fulfilled their obligations to the law meant to prevent public officeholders from illicitly enriching themselves while in office.

Among the three arms of government, the judiciary is the most compliant. Out of the 96 superior court judges appointed from 2017 to date, 14, failed to declare their assets and liabilities. The judges have an 85.4% compliance rate.

President Akufo-Addo publicly said in 2017 that all his ministerial appointees had declared their assets. However, The Fourth Estate’s series showed that many of them had not, a situation Mrs. Narteh said should have prompted the president to act.

“So, if the president was deceived by his appointees that they had declared their assets while they actually had not done so, my expectation was to have a quick response from the president, sanctioning those appointees for deception, which is a criminal offence. But nothing has been done so far unless it’s been done on the blindside of the public,” she said.

Mrs. Narteh faulted the asset declaration regime for failing to provide the necessary framework for verifying declared assets and liabilities.

“So, I can say that the asset declaration regime, as it stands, has not provided the needed framework for us to be able to ascertain the issues around verification of the assets”

An anti-corruption crusader, Vitus Azeem, noted that the “lack of commitment on the part of leadership” had contributed enormously to the non-compliance with the law.

“As far as 2008, we met the relevant committees of parliament to look at the regulations of Act 550. As of today, we don’t have the regulations of the Act, because there were disagreements,” he added.

With no clearly spelt out punitive measures in the law to deal with defaulters, the law leaves the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) with discretionary powers.

However, a law lecturer at the University of Professional Studies, Justice Abdulai, observed that CHRAJ had not used its powers enough to compel public officeholders to comply with the law.

That, he said, had emboldened such public officials, who were aware of CHRAJ’s history of not coming down hard on defaulters.

Ghana’s laws empower the Audit Service and CHRAJ to implement the asset to declaration law. However, public officials have continued to enter and leave office without declaring their assets.

Participants at the forum attributed the loophole to the ineffective works of CHRAJ and the Audit Service and charged them to “do more”.

But in its defence, the director in charge of anti-corruption at CHRAJ, Stephen Azantilow, said the institution had been working in their best capacity to ensure compliance with the law and was currently investigating over 400 issues relating to asset declaration.

The investigation is as a result of a petition filed by four Ghanaians using the evidence provided by The Fourth Estate publications.

While in the past the Audit Service only accepted the documents without verifying its content, a senior officer from the legal department of the Audit Service, Anita-Delight Danquah, said the envelopes were now opened and the contents verified.

Responding to calls for the Audit Service to do physical verification of all assets declared, Ms Danquah said CHRAJ, not the Audit Service, had the capacity to handle that aspect of the work.

“Fortunately for CHARJ, they are the investigators, and we are the custodians. We audit, when you bring it. We look through. We make sure everything is set. We can’t verify if it is true or not true…maybe we should go further, but the further should be from CHARJ because they have the investigative arm. Audit Service doesn’t so we ensure that you do the basic things.”

The Editor-in-Chief of the Fourth Estate, Manasseh Azure Awuni, noted that although public institutions such as CHRAJ and Audit Service were working at making government officials comply with the law, there was more they could do, adding that “they won’t go hungry if they do their work. A week after he was removed from office, former Auditor General, Domelevo, had another job”.

His remarks follow his observation that some employees in Ghana’s anti-corruption institutions feared victimization, which accounts for their silence on some pressing matters.

What does the law say?

Article 286 (1) of the 1992 Constitution states that “a person who holds a public office mentioned in clause (5) of this Article shall submit to the Auditor-General written declaration of all property or assets owned by, or liabilities by him whether directly or indirectly (a) within three months after the coming into force of this constitution or before taking office, as the case may be, (b) at the end of every four years; and (c) at the end of his term of office.”

The Constitution requires the declaration to be done before the public officer takes office. However, Section 1(4) (c) of the Public Office holders (Declaration of Assets and Disqualification) Act directs public office holders to meet this requirement “not later than six months after taking office, at the end of every four years and not later than six months at the end of his or her term.”

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The Ministry of Finance has directed ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to charge 27 pesewas for the photocopy of an A4 size page of information requested under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

However, if the information is printed from a computer, it will cost 38 pesewas. A copy of the information on storage devices, including pen drives will cost the applicant 29 pesewas.

Applicants will pay GH₵ 1.28 for “transcription of visual images, for an A-4 size page or part thereof,” the ministry said. The announcement is contained in a statement dated September 14, 2022, and signed by the Deputy Minister of Finance, Abena Osei-Asare.

The ministry’s directive follows parliament’s approval of the Fees and Charges (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, which determines what fees public institutions should charge the public for services.

The approved figures are miles lower than what the interim fees the RTI Commission gave in a ruling against the Minerals Commission which demanded $1,000 for information.

In that landmark decision, the RTI Commission ordered the mining regulator to charge only GHc 1.90, if the information was to be sent via email. It also instructed the Minerals Commission to charge GHc1.80 per page if it was to print the information for The Fourth Estate.

In June 2021, the Minerals Commission demanded $1,000 (GH¢5,700 to provide the information requested under the law.

The Fourth Estate had requested information on companies licensed to undertake mining in Ghana between January 2013 and May 2021, and companies whose licenses had been revoked or suspended within the same period.

The amount is the highest, yet any state institution has requested from The Fourth Estate.

But the RTI Commission annulled the decision.

Such demands per Regulation 4 of the Minerals and Mining (Licensing) Regulations, 2012 (LI 2176), apply to requests of commercial value including cadastral maps and exploratory data of mining zones.

In the absence of a legislative instrument to guide fees that public institutions should charge RTI applicants, the Minerals Commission said it fell on its internal laws to charge the fees.

The Minerals Commission challenged the RTI Commission’s decision at the High Court and lost but proceeded to the Court of Appeal, where the case is pending.

MFWA vs NCA

In July 2020, the National Communications Authority (NCA) asked the MFWA to pay GH¢2000 for information on the closure of some radio stations in Ghana.

The MFWA went to court to challenge the fees, and after almost five months of a legal tussle, the court gave its judgment on Thursday, June 17, 2021.

The Accra High Court presided over by Justice Gifty Adjei Addo slashed the cost of the information to GH¢1,500.

Ernest Norgbey Vs the EC

Justice Gifty Addo gave a similar decision on July 21, 2020, when she ruled on an RTI case brought to her court by a lawmaker.

Ernest Norgbey, MP for Ashaiman, had written to the Electoral Commission (EC) under the RTI law requesting information on the procurement procedure used by the commission to hire the services of two consultants—Dr Ofori-Adjei, an IT Consultant and Mr A. Akrofi, a procurement consultant.

The two were said to be very instrumental in the EC’s purchase of a biometric voter management system (BVMS). Mr Norgbey wanted to know whether the hiring of the services of the two consultants was in line with the Public Procurement Act.

The EC said it could not provide the information because parliament had not yet determined fees and charges for RTI requests.

The new fees are likely to lay to rest a long-running battle between applicants for information and the MDAs, which sometimes make outrageous financial demands on persons seeking information.

In recent times, the Public Procurement Authority and the Environmental Protection Agency have recently demanded GHS1000 and GHS2000 respectively as fees in response to RTI requests from The Fourth Estate.

EPA demands GHC2,500 from The Fourth Estate in a RTI request 

Abu-Sadik Yahaya lost his first child and looked forward to a replacement. However, the joy with which he expected his second child vanished when it dawned on him that he would have to live with a special needs child.

“I wanted a way out. I needed a solution. I sold my car. I spent every resource at my disposal and was ready to go anywhere and do everything possible. So, once a place was recommended by neighbours and friends, I dashed there,” Abu-Sadik recounted his adventures in search of a cure.

As a spare parts dealer, he knew where to get the right components to fix defects in vehicles, but as a desperate father looking for healing for his child sick with cerebral palsy, he did not know where to get the solution.

Eventually, he found his ‘solution centre’ on the premises of a mallam (a seer who is able to reveal past, present and future happenings and provide remedy or counsel).

“You have not offended anyone; this is from God. This is your trial because God knows you can bear this burden,” the mallam told him in words that travelled deep into his heart, as they resonated with Qur’an 2:286: “God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear.”

Abu-Sadik does not walk alone in this fate; he has a partner in Eric Akwasi Banor, who initially, did not understand why his daughter should suffer from down syndrome.

Just like Abu-Sadik, Mr Banor, a driver, drove around town, seeking medical help from orthodox practitioners and herbalists, all to no avail.

“I must be paying for the sins of my forefathers,” he thought at a point.

However, after wandering in vain in search of deliverance from the “sins of his forefathers”, he decided to accept Jemima [his daughter] just as God gave her to him.

“We are very happy to have her as a child,” he said in an interview with The Fourth Estate.

Mabel Aku Kuleapenu and her family are also in search of relief for their brother, David, who is suffering from speech and walking impairment.

According to her, the family could not help David, their physically challenged brother, to either go to school or learn a trade because they were too poor to do that.

“We don’t know where to take him so we are only hoping and praying that God will help him grow so that we can discover his talent.
“We lost our mother in 2018 and that is our father sitting there,” 30-year-old Mabel said, pointing to her father. “He is not working so it is myself and other siblings who are taking care of them [David and their father]. It is difficult for us.”

Children, gifts from God

Children are mostly considered a gift from God. But while that gift may be divine, human factors such as age, self-medication during pregnancy, hormonal imbalance, and pre-natal or post-natal conditions can alter the formation of children, according to experts.

“Special needs” is an umbrella term for a wide array of diagnoses, from mild to very challenging conditions.

Experts say children with special needs may have developmental delays, medical conditions, psychiatric conditions, and/or congenital conditions.

The physical conditions suffered may include multiple sclerosis, allergies and asthma, juvenile arthritis, leukaemia, muscular dystrophy and epilepsy, while the developmental conditions may include down syndrome, autism, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia, aphasia or dysphasia, auditory processing disorder and visual processing disorder, Ms Joan Kafui Wenya, the Coordinator for Special Education at the La Dade-Kotopon Municipal Education Office, explained.

Stigmatisation

Ms Wenya, further explained that stigmatisation pushed frustrated and depressed parents to mete out inhumane treatment to special needs children, including locking them up in rooms, starving and, sometimes, poisoning them so they (parents) can be free.

“In public, people shun us as if he’s a plague. When we board public transport, some passengers would not even want to sit close to us. As such, I have no option but to charter a taxi or an Uber for all our rounds. Even when I have to take him to the hospital, it has to be a private one to avoid the weird and uncomfortable glances from people,” Abu-Sadik recounted his encounter with stigmatization.

The ugly face of stigmatization is not directed at parents only; special needs workers and officials like Ms Joan Kafui Wenya also face it.

“You find people tagging and jesting. They say things like, ‘Some of your people are here. And when having a discourse, one can jokingly say, ‘You are an adult with special needs,’” she recounted.

According to her, when she got pregnant, some people, told her they could not wait for her to give birth to a special need child because she championed their cause.

Effects of COVID-19 on special needs education

When the COVID-19 pandemic took the world by storm, it unleashed catastrophic effects on the economy, business, health and education of many countries.

In Ghana, special needs education received very little or no attention from the state in the interventions the government put in place to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.

As the traditional education system at the pre-school, basic, high and tertiary levels transited to online studies in the wake of COVID-19, special needs education was neglected, as parents and caregivers had no support to cater for the education needs of such children.

A caregiver to special needs children, Auntie Maggie, said due to the underlying conditions of special needs children, their schools closed down even before the government directed the closure of schools.

“It was more disturbing as there was an escalation of behavioural issues, throwing of tantrums and refusal to eat since they were cut off from their usual routine of going to school. We tried online classes for our students, but they were so new to it and it wasn’t sustainable because even face-to-face is not easy, how much more online?” she said.

In his 21st broadcast to the nation on measures taken by the government against COVID-19, President Akufo-Addo announced the reopening of schools.

“Our children must go to school, albeit safely, and we are satisfied that in the current circumstances, the reopening of our schools is safe,” the president said.

Prior to the lockdown, the New Horizon Special School had a population of about 100 pupils but only about 30 of them reported when school resumed after the Covid-19-induced closure of schools.

The school authorities could not reach out to the parents of some of the children, while others were said to have relocated to places very far from the school.

However, the global pandemic did not spare the Ghanaian special needs schools. The ravages of Covid- 19 were heavily felt among them after the president’s announcement. The fullest weight was felt when these expatriates sent information that they had to withdraw their support due to the economic crises that came with the pandemic, a parent mentioned in an interview with The Fourth Estate.

The special school owners knew that the withdrawal of the donors will affect enrolment and attendance of students because part of the bills which had earlier been waived for parents due to the availably of funding would now have to be borne solely by the parents without any reduction.

For parents, they knew it was “a door of no return”. That is, without funding, or subsidy on charges and fees, they could not bear the expenses to keep their children in the special schools. As a result, some of the children were withdrawn. The fortunate ones were sent to regular schools and the others, were kept at home.

For those who enrolled their wards in regular school, it was because they could not afford the fees, but others have completely dropped out of school.

According to Ms. Wenya, a special needs advocate, some parents were scared that their children’s condition would deteriorate if they sent them back to school, so they preferred to keep them at home.

Yahaya, Jemima and David

Yahaya Abubakar and Jemima Barnor are children with cerebral palsy and down syndrome respectively. They are among children with special needs who have enrolled in regular schools after Covid-19 struck.

Yahaya, 14, is in Class 4, while Jemima, 10, is in Class 1. But they are struggling in their new school environment.

“Yahaya is coping. He is unable to hold items; not even a pen. He has to be fed because he is unable to eat by himself. His teacher and friends feed him,” Abu-Sadik said.

At Manu in the Ketu North District in the Volta Region, David may be far away from Yahaya and Jemima, who are in Accra. Suffering from speech and walking disability since birth, however, the 17-year-old David shares a similar fate with Yahaya and Jemima.

David lost his mother in 2018. His father is bedridden with a stroke. This has compounded David’s situation.

He is 4.5ft tall, but with his walking disability, he requires the support of his six siblings, especially Ewoenam. Failure to get such support could make him fall anytime he attempts to walk.

David started school late. He dropped out after Class 1 at the Ohawu Basic School for three reasons. First, he had to walk for 21 minutes, about 1.8 Km to school. Second, his classmates mocked him because of his speech impairment. And, third, he hardly grasped what was taught.

Ohawu Basic School does not have the support system to enable him to access the classroom and function as a pupil.

According to a former head teacher of the school (at the time David was in school), Daleku Daniel Kwaku, David needed a skill support system that would ease his mobility and speech.

He found such a support system only in his sister Ewoenam in junior high school who accompanied him to school.

This means on days Ewoenam was unwell, David could not go to school.

In fact, Ewoenam had to abandon her dream of continuing her education after completing JHS in order to cater for her sick brother.

A ‘cursed child?’

The joy of giving birth to a second boy did not last long in David’s family. At age 3,
David could not walk, could not speak nor communicate in a clear voice with his
parents or siblings as his age mates did.

David suffers from childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), a speech disorder that makes it difficult for a child’s brain to coordinate the complex oral movements needed to create sounds into syllables, syllables into words, and words into phrases.

To some community members, David is a cursed child from the gods and that is the basis for deep-seated stigmatization against him.

In spite of the challenges David’s walking aide, Ewoenam, is excited that her brother is improving in terms of managing his life.

“David is growing. He is now 17 years old. His voice is a bit clearer now than in the past. He can now eat by himself and can also walk alone, except that he sometimes slides off and falls. But anytime he falls, he hurt himself, so sometimes I have to help him to walk around,” she said.

Taking care of David has put Ewoenam’s life on hold. She cannot do anything else, but she is willing to continue to be her brother’s keeper.

She appealed to benevolent individuals and institutions to support David to enable him to function independently, adding, “Any help to David will lift the dependence burden on me, then I can also do something for myself.”

“I wish to see him grow, get married and make his family,” she added.

Mabel could not agree more with her sister.

“We need a support system or school that can give him [David] the needed skills and training. Even if he cannot learn or continue the school, we are only hoping that he will be supported to learn a vocation so that as he grows, he does not become a burden but have the capacity to take care of himself and his family,” she said.

Empathy, not sympathy

 According to Ms Joan Kafui Wenya, in order to ensure that people better appreciate the state and conditions of special needs children, caregivers and society must show empathy instead of sympathy.

“I’ve made colleagues, teachers and other people know that we must not sympathize with persons with special needs. They don’t need our sympathy, but we need to empathize with them. Empathy means putting yourself in their condition to see how you can manage it. Accept the child’s condition and make sure you are pushing for the child’s reformation,” she explained.

On her part, Auntie Maggie considers three decades of her job as a “ministry”, saying seeing the children independent and doing things they could not do earlier brings her so much joy.

“Seeing the crafts of some of these kids brings a bunch of joy. They are pure; they are affectionate and very appreciative of what you do for them,” she noted.

The Communications Director for Child’s Right International, Afia Nyamekye Kumah-Abrafa, said taking care of children in society was everyone’s responsibility so all should get involved.

“Investment is not only money. Investment is love, care and attention. Children with special needs should not be looked at as liabilities because an Adult is a child who has survived,” she said.

The families of Jemima, Yahaya and David have accepted them as gifts from God, and they keep offering them the requisite assistance for their daily progress.

That is why Jemima has a good reason to be cheerful and express it in singing and dancing. Yahaya and David have big dreams for the future, the former wanting to become an Imam (an Islamic teacher) and the latter, a mobile phone repairer.

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The writers of this report, Deborah Pokua Bempah & Richard Mensah Adonu, were Fellows of the maiden edition of the Next Generation Investigative Journalism Fellowship at the Media Foundation for West Africa.