Apologise over Free SHS meal ‘dog food’ remark – MoE to Mahama

After describing John Dramani Mahama’s comment that the meal served to Free Senior High School students is that of dog food, the Ministry of Education has called on the former President to apologise to students in the country.

In a social media post sighted by AcademicWeek, the spokesman for the Education Ministry, Kwasi Kwarteng said Mahama is known for his unpresidential remarks but little did he know he could be such loose, vulgar and low.

“Mahama is not only wrong in demeaning our collective efforts in providing quality education for Ghanaian students but he’s also wrong for reducing the school children to dogs. That’s insulting,” the Public Relations Officer said.

Describing the politician’s comment as unacceptable Kwarteng added that “somebody whose leadership witnessed the worst educational outcomes ever shouldn’t be making such comments. He should apologize to Ghanaian Children.”

The Ministry’s call for Mr John Mahama to apologise comes after he said the poor nature of the food sponsored by the government and being served to the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) students makes them sick and uncomfortable.

”Today if you go to see the kind of food the children are eating in the schools…you shudder to serve such food to your dogs at home,” the National Democratic Congress’s (NDC) flagbearer hopeful, John Dramani Mahama stated.

He indicated that the shortage of food in many public Senior High Schools is making most of the beneficiaries of the Free Senior High School flagship policy introduced in the 2017 academic year drop out of school.

Addressing delegates and party members in the Asikuma Odoben Brakwa Constituency in the Central Region, the former president said how the Free SHS is being implemented by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is very bad.

Should the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) win the 2024 election, Mr Mahama said the next NDC government will decentralise the supply of food to the Senior High Schools by amending the Free SHS policy.

The leading National Democratic Congress member stressed his party will amend the policy to allow headmasters to take care of their own food needs unlike what the NPP has done by centralising the purchase of food for the schools.