Education, health feature prominently in Ghana's presidential debate

The four main presidential candidates in Ghana's December elections had their first open debate on Tuesday night in northern city Tamale with education and health leading the pack of issues that had prominence on the night of the first round of debates. Ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC)'s candidate President John Dramani Mahama and Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo of largest opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), who were the two front- runners, Abu Sakara Foster, the Convention People's Party (CPP)'s, and Hassan Ayariga of the People's National Convention (PNC) squared it off with one another on whose policies held the best hope for the future of Ghana. Beamed live on Television from the Northern Regional Capital of Tamale, 658 km north of the capital, the debate saw the four candidates whose parties had representation in parliament juggling mainly between issues bordering on economy, health, education and industrial issues. With their promise of making education at Senior High School level free of charge, the NPP and CPP candidates argued vehemently why their promise was the best for the country if it must attain full middle income status in the foreseeable future. NPP's Akufo-Addo was resolute in his free SHS policy, arguing that no child must be thrown out of school at the tender age of 14 and 15, which is the year most people complete Junior High School, but must be kept in school and equipped with employable skills. He argued that the seeming lack of resources to implement the pro-poor educational policy was due to the waste in the system especially from inflated cost of building educational infrastructure. President Mahama on the other hand pointed out that the country' s constitution had already cut out the educational system to be run by any government that ruled the country. According to him, since the constitution made mandatory Free and Compulsory Universal BasicEducation (FCUBE), his government would concentrate on providing infrastructure to expand access to basic education so all children of school going age would gain access to quality and free basic education. This approach, he believed was more equitable than making SHS free for the few who could access the limited vacancies available in the country. Mahama likened the attempt to make Senior High Education free without solving the problems associated with basic education to building a beautiful house on a weak foundation. "We will therefore ensure that basic education becomes truly free and compulsory before gradually increasing capitation for senior high school education to make it progressively free," the president promised. With about 27 percent of the country's budget already being spent on education alone in order to close the gap at the basic and the secondary level which forms the foundation for the children, Mahama promised that the next NDC government would target investment to the places where it would benefit majority of the people, which meant targeting the funding gap at the basic level, technical and vocational level and in that priority target secondary and tertiary education. While Sakara-Foster was clear in his assertion that free SHS was the way forward, PNC's Ayariga became the dark spot on the night as his arguments were more of contradictions. On health Akufo-Addo accused the NDC government of collapsing the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) bequeathed to it by the previous NPP government under John Agyekum Kuffuor. "The NDC met the NHIS as an institution in surplus of over 300 million Ghana cedis (148 million U.S. dollars) left for the country by the NPP in 2009, but today, the NHIS is in deficit close to the 300 cedis," Akufo-Addo alleged. He promised that his government would stop the alleged use of NHS funds to fund other activities of government which he said had become the feature of the management of the NHIS under the NDC. But with official data, Mahama debunked the NPP candidate's claims, countering that the scheme touted as one of the leading health insurance schemes in the world would not die under his watch. Contrary to the assertions by the NPP flagbearer, the NHIS has seen tremendous growth in visitation rising from 9 million to 25 million, while claims have also increased tremendously, asserted Mahama. While most social media platform visitors called the night for the president for the accuracy with which he stack top the issues, others, mostly supporters of NPP believed Akuffo-Addo carried the night, with more independent analysts rather choosing the CPP candidate.