The University of Ghana should be renamed after my father – the daughter of Busia

General News on Friday, April 12, 2019

Source: citinewsroom.com

2019-04-12

Daughter of former Prime Minister of Ghana, Kofi Abrefa Busia, Nana Fremah Busia wants the University of Ghana to be renown in honor of her father.

She added that the University of Ghana should have been renamed in honor of her father, given his contribution to higher education.

Some public universities have been referred to as key figures who have played various roles in the development of Ghana.

The decision has elicited mixed reactions among members of the general public, many of them asking the government to focus on improving public education.

One of them is former President Rawlings, who refused the honor of being named University of Development Studies.

Nana Fremah Busia, representative of the first university of the country, justified the choice of the first university of the country.

"There is a university that should have been named after her, she called the University of Ghana, Legon. He was the first African teacher there. He created the department of sociology; he has incorporated the Department of African Studies in Sociology. Today, when you go to Legon, you have an African Studies Department named after Dr. Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, of the University of Science and Technology, who was appointed, "she said.

"Kofi Abrefa Busia was the first African professor at Oxford University, at a time when most people had not seen any clbadrooms yet. Are we going to pay tribute now to universities without gravitas? What about Legon? The department of African studies had for a very long time the head of the department, Dr. Bami, who is the brother of Dr. Busia. Without politics, he would have been the first vice-chancellor of the university, "she said.

Frema Busia also criticized what she described as a failure of successive governments to follow the development path her father had chosen for Ghana.

In May 2018, Nana President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo categorically stated that her uncle, Joseph Kwame Kyeretwie Boakye Danquah, pan-Africanist and member of the Big Six, was the founder of Ghana's leading university, the University of Ghana.

According to him, it is thanks to JB Danquah's inspiring vision that Ghanaians were able to reject the initial decision of the colonial government to agree to create a separate university for Ghana.