Hello
my good friend PaaQuecy,
I
trust that you are doing great by His grace and congratulations for being the
latest father in town. You are undoubtedly a strong man having successfully
combined the several "unending issues" in NUGS and your conjugal
commitments because not many men are able to do that with such stellar. Your
wife must be a lucky woman I must admit.
I
also wish to commend you for how far you’ve handled the affairs of the Union so
far. I duly appreciate the difficulties with which you are discharging your
mandate to the students of Ghana having spent and still spending substantial
part of your time in the nation’s courts battling your general secretary and
three others who are still contesting your legitimacy as the NUGS President.
Not even Jesus Christ would have the peace of mind and the necessary
concentration under such challenging but egregious circumstances where you are
not only fighting “detractors” from WITHOUT but also from WITHIN. I doubt
anyone envies you Mr. President but the good news is that you are able to
accommodate all of that and still move on with your legitimate mandate as
upheld by the courts recently.
Having
said that Mr. President, kindly indulge me on a number of issues in relation to
the upcoming NUGS emergency congress and other consequential matters of concern
to me. To start with, I know I have a 24/7 access to you so please forgive me
for deliberately indulging you openly because I want as many stakeholders as
possible to follow this productive engagement for the love of God and NUGS.
DECISION
TO HOLD A 2-DAY EMERGENCY CONGRESS AND CHARGE GHc30 CAPITATION PER DELEGATE
First
and foremost, your outfit sent letters dated 23rd March, 2016 to all bloc heads
and SRCs inviting institutions to NUGS emergency congress scheduled for 8th and
9th April at UDS Navrongo campus. I have no problem with it at all because the
decision to hold this 2-day emergency congress on the said dates and venue was
approved at the last CC meeting held at UCC of which I was in attendance. Also
inherent in your invitation letter is the congress capitation which was pegged
at GHc30.00 per delegate. Again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that
because the delegates have to be fed and accommodated for the two days and more
importantly, no constitutional breach has been occasioned in the circumstance.
In fact, hell would have broken loose on you and your executives if you had
attempted to camp delegates from across the country for two days without food,
water and accommodation.
I
am also reliably informed that as we speak, no institution has paid dues to
your administration, meaning there is nothing in your coffers so you’ve been
running the secretariat with your own resources as executives. Astonishingly, I
hear some people including the executives of GRASAG and USAG are challenging
this decision yet they don’t tell us how they expect the congress to be funded.
Talk is indeed cheap. Maybe they expect you to break the Bank of Ghana and get
jailed afterwards. I’m sure they won’t be happy if their senators attempt to
force them to organize a capitation free congress, yet they expect you to do
same even against CC decision? How ridiculous!
In
furtherance to the above and having perused the agenda for the congress (which
includes CC meeting to take the state of the Union’s address, Situational
Reports, formation of Electoral Commission, presentation and approval of
committees' reports, Review of NUGS Dues, presentation of vetting results and
ultimately, the AASU elections among others), there is absolutely no way we can
use one day to exhaust all these items. We are intellectuals and need to be
fair to ourselves. Secondly they are unable to tell us any aspect of the
constitution that is being compromised. Granted that NEC met and took that
unrealistic decision (even though there is evidence to the contrary), I am
putting it to them that NEC has NO power to reverse the decision of CC (which
is a higher body) so that argument is terminally inept and void ab-initio.
TEN
(10) DELEGATES ACROSS BOARD
Mr.
President, I appreciate the position of NEC (by slight majority decision) to
limit the number of delegates to 10 per institution because of the uniqueness
of this congress and more importantly, the fact that these same institutions
are complaining that they have no money and also wish to have some convenience,
the principle of having 5 CC members per each institution regardless of their
population and hence amount payable as dues, the host institution’s apparent
difficulty to accommodate over 1,500 expected delegates if we are to go by the
prevailing formulae whilst school is in session among others.
Notwithstanding
my appreciation of these aforementioned facts, I still completely disagree with
you because those reasons cannot be enough grounds to "undermine" the
NUGS Constitution. It is not surprising to me at all that, most of the SRCs and
some NUGS alumni are calling on you to reconsider this rather unpopular
decision. I am known to have fought “everybody” including my own in defense of
our Constitution and therefore it would be disingenuous and hypocritical on my
part to maintain a loud silence in the face of this development which is
clearly UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
Neither
CC nor NEC has the powers to amend any provision in the Constitution, let
alone, an Entrenched Clause. Article 94 of the constitution explicitly tells us
how such provisions can be amended. If the constitution is on your side, you
know Mr. President, that I would be the first person to support you. This, I
have done on countless occasions even at the expense of my own and eventually
got vindicated by the Courts. You would recall that when a “supposed NEC” met
and ordered you to step aside, I vehemently disagreed with them because NEC has
no such powers per the provisions in our constitution.
You
and I have come a long way relative to fighting mishaps and injustices in NUGS
and in the student front which almost landed us in trouble and please forgive
me for reminding you of arguably, one of the saddest moments in the recent
history of student activism where a fake self-incriminating whatsapp
conversation with my supposed dp was created and circulated on social media
which even involves names of some sitting Ministers of State, by our detractors
in a forlorn attempt to attack the very pillars of my credibility and destroy
my political future; a very sad development which made me shed so much tears.
Even though they failed big time in that diabolic move and ended up
embarrassing themselves for doing such a poor job, I still find it difficult to
forgive those guys for attempting to do something that even the devil will not
contemplate.
CONCLUSIONS
AND WAY FORWARD
On
the issue of the GHc30.00 capitation per head (covering feeding for the two
days, administrative cost, accommodation, venue et al), it is pretty obvious
from the foregoing that it is in the right direction and nothing can be done
about it especially because this matter was dealt with and approved at the last
CC. Fortunately, when I spoke to most of the NUGS executives, all of them agreed
to this knowing very well that NUGS has no option else these inevitable costs
would have to be borne by they themselves. I don’t begrudge the USAG and GRASAG
executives who are kicking against it because they know very well that they are
not going pay anything no matter the circumstance because they are not the
people organising the congress, so why worry yourself Mr. President?
On
the issue of the proposed 10 delegates per institution, it is palpably
unconstitutional and no one (not even CC, let alone NEC) can justify same. So I
humbly suggest you strictly go by the explicit provisions (entrenched, I must
add) in the constitution regarding institutional representation to Congress
(Article 94). However, because the host institution might not be able to accommodate
these huge numbers (over 1500) and the issues of financial prudence and
convenience, I suggest that your outfit issues a notice to the SRCs that each
institution should be able to pay the capitation for at least 10 delegates and
make provision for same so that you can defray your costs and that, becomes the
prerequisite to the right to vote at the emergency congress as per the relevant
provisions in the NUGS Constitution (Article 15b and 15c which are both
entrenched constitutional provisions and of binding effect).
I
am reliably informed that both GUPS and USAG have in their GA and Senate
meetings ratified some 14 and 16 institutions respectively in the runup to the
forthcoming emergency congress for obvious reasons. This is raising so much
eyebrow and tension because some of these “institutions” do not exist at all
and others have no SRC/local NUGS secretariats. I wonder how such supposed
institutions are going to make representation at CC as per Article 22a of the
Constitution (entrenched). Again, Article 7 (which is also an entrenched
provision) of the constitution makes it clear that membership to NUGS is opened
to accredited Student Representation of recognized educational institutions,
obviously referring to SRCs and not phantom or nonexisting schools.
So
to deal with this problem, Mr. President, I humbly suggest that your outfit
immediately issues a notice to all the “supposed newly accredited
institutions/campuses" by both USAG and GUPS that if they wish to
participate in the emergency congress, they must present written evidence
(maybe in the form of a formal letter on their SRC letterhead, endorsed/stamped
by the Dean of Student/Registrar of the institution) that they indeed have a
functioning Student Representation Council before they are accorded all the
necessary rights and privileges at the congress. This is the only means we can
check whether those newly ratified institutions as we are told duly exist or
otherwise.
Last
but not least, I understand the letters you sent inviting institutions to the
emergency congress do not bear your signature. Even though, technically, this
practice is not wrong because you have used the official NUGS letterhead with
all the accompanying security features for easy authentication, I still think
you should have signed in order to clear all doubts. But it is not too late at
all since you already have the email addresses of the various SRCs, you only
have to right the “wrongs” and resend the invitations.
Postponing
the NUGS emergency congress is absolutely a NO option because as we speak,
Ghana is already disadvantaged having received confirmation from the AASU Boss,
comrade Fred Awah that most of the National Student Unions in the other African
countries have already elected their AASU reps; many of whom are busily
campaigning for the position of AASU Secretary General. Ghana cannot afford to
lose this prestigious continental position having held same consistently for a
good number of years. In the meantime, I am waiting for whoever is elected as
our AASU rep to throw my unflinching support behind him so that Ghana can
maintain her enviable stature at the continental student movement for God and
country. Respectfully, it is soothing to observe Mr. President that, almost all
the “legitimate concerns" I have raised in this letter can easily be
addressed within 24 hours so the ball is now in your court.
As
unfortunate as it is, Mr. President, kindly forget the gratuitous attacks on
your person from some GRASAG executives essentially accusing you of “high
treason” and “subversion” relative to the constitution. I honestly think my
seniors (graduate students) could have done far better. I doubt the USAG
executives would follow this reprehensible tangent of destruction of the very
Union we claim to love. If we love NUGS, we must respect its structures and
certainly, the office of the NUGS president remains the embodiment of the Union
regardless of who occupies the position today.
NUGS
is 50 years today and I expect us to tell a better story of ourselves to this
generation and the unborn. Once again Mr. President, I prefer we lose our
precious lives for upholding the truth and in defense of our strong convictions
and constitutional order than to live a life of deception and hypocrisy so that
in the final analysis, posterity would surely vindicate us INSHA ALLAH. I hope
to hear from you soon. GOODBYE.
Thank
you.
Still
your good friend in student struggle,
#
ForGodandCountry
IDDI
MUHAYU-DEEN (Iddi of NUGS fame)
Former NUGS Secretary
Secretary, NUGS @50 Planning Com.
Convener, concerned students (CONSFON)
(0245335197)
Former NUGS Secretary
Secretary, NUGS @50 Planning Com.
Convener, concerned students (CONSFON)
(0245335197)
No comments:
Post a Comment