I ditched US Congress for Ghana’s education – Adutwum

Minister for Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum says his goal was to run for US Congress in Southern California but cut the dream after His Excellency Nana Akufo-Addo asked for his help to change Ghana’s education system.

Speaking on Citi TV’s Face to Face show monitored by AcademicWeek, the Education Minister said he accepted Akufo-Addo’s request to return to Ghana to make an impact on the lives of millions of students in the country.

“What excites me is when we are able to make an impact on the lives of children, I felt that coming back to Ghana I will be able to impact the lives of millions of students. In America, I was making an impact on the lives of thousands of people which was still very much appreciated and recognized in South Los Angeles,” he told the host of Face to Face.

The Bosomtwe lawmaker continued that “so when Akufo-Addo visited one of my schools and asked me if would you consider coming back to help me change Ghana’s education system I said yes I would consider and I truly considered.”

Asked why he ditched the United States Congress, he said he had the belief that he could easily run for the Congress and win because he was a household name and well known as Dr Yaw by the US citizens in Southern California.

“I wanted to make history but abandoned that goal after Nana Akufo-Addo requested that if I would consider coming back to Ghana to help him change the education system in Ghana,” the Member of Parliament for Bosomtwe stated.

In a related development, Mr Osei Yaw Adutwum after a report claimed he had misused $1.2 million World Bank money meant for training public school teachers has said he is not a corrupt Minister for Education.

“I did not come to the country to be corrupt, I will never do that. The amount is sitting in the Ministry of Education (MoE) account. So ladies and gentlemen nothing can be further from the truth,” Dr Osei Yaw told the journalists.

The Minister in charge of Education at the press conference told the media some Ghana Education Service (GES) teachers can attest to the fact that they were trained on a platform. He said 148,000 teachers have been trained so far.

“National Teaching Council (NTC) platform has also trained 43,000 teachers. Ask my colleague teachers across the country and they will tell you they are on a platform and learning digital literacy,” the Minister stressed at the briefing.