By Kwesi Yankah
Monday, three days after Ghana’s 69th anniversary, I was browsing through my archives when I chanced upon a past document that startled me. Dated March 2016, exactly a decade ago. Reading closely, I was at a loss for words! A WAEC logo on a banner announcing me as speaker in a distinguished speaker series: The WAEC Endowment Lecture. I was scheduled as the 21st speaker and the 5th Ghanaian; the previous speakers from Ghana being E A Boateng, Florence Dolphyne, Ivan Addae-Mensah, D. A. Akyeampong. The next speaker would be Yours Truly, 14th March 2016, Alisa Hotel.
Did the lecture announced come on? Yes, it did, but not as scheduled. It was cancelled at the eleventh hour by WAEC! The lecture’s title on second thoughts posed a problem to the organizers, and the Council had to quickly move in to avoid a protocol breach. To my embarrassment, a new speaker was dramatically announced in the media.
My invitation to deliver the lecture came in September 2015; and I had spent six months digging the archives to do justice to a theme that was of critical importance to secondary education, and had long been accepted by WAEC. Days before the lecture came a letter from WAEC preceded by phone calls that updated me on sudden developments that made the topic unsuited for the occasion. My invitation to deliver the lecture had been in a letter six months before the event. Having decided on a theme, I regularly interacted with the examinations body over a period of five months, resulting in a huge volume of authentic data from WAEC in my possession. My consultations went on from week to week until a few days to the scheduled event, when WAEC dramatically changed the narrative. It began with a series of phone calls that urged me to change the title namely, “The three-year-four-year pendulum: towards a stable public policy on senior high school education in Ghana.”
The dramatic shift in directives left me dumb-founded given the short notice, the absence of any cogent explanation, and WAEC’s own accumulated experience in intellectual freedom.14th March 2016, three days before the event, I received a letter specifically directing that the lecture be put on hold. In the meantime, notices were already in the public domain announcing a substitute speaker for the day, who was to speak on a different topic. The assault on my personal honour and integrity was unsurpassed. The reason for the dramatic policy reversal, according to WAEC, was the lecture’s potential of ‘generating political controversy, especially in an election year.’ The huge public uproar following this was to be expected, followed by an avalanche of offers from various think tanks across the country that were ready to host the lecture. Upon days of reflection, my final choice was the platform of Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, of which I had been a fellow since 1999. After narrating the unfortunate development to the President of the Academy, a worried Prof Akilagpa Sawyer readily directed that the Academy should host the lecture on 3rd May 2016.
Chaired by Prof Dateh-Bah the long-awaited lecture attracted a mix of high school students, academics, educationists, representatives of the National Development Planning Commission, policy makers and the general public. At the time of my clash with WAEC, I was President of Central University, having earlier been honorary secretary of the Academy, and Pro-Vice Chancellor of University of Ghana. The entire episode was a rather bizarre exercise in self-censorship, and an assault on academic freedom; it demonstrates gross disrespect for critical research and analysis as bases for sound policy formulation.
I narrate the full story including the essay, in my digital library collections: ‘Essays that crossed the Redline.’ Freedom month of March 2026, I bring to mind this rude assault on Ghana’s academic freedom exactly a decade ago.
Fellow Ghanaians, the road to real freedom remains rocky!
kyankah@ashesi.edu.gh
