John Mahama rehashes false claim about NDC’s role in public universities establishment

Claim: The flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress, John Mahama, says every public university in the country was initiated and built by an NDC government.

Verdict: This is false. There are several public universities in the country whose establishment predates the party.

Full Text

Former President and Flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, has said that all public universities in Ghana were initiated and built by his party.

While criticising the New Patriotic Party for renaming some universities after certain political personalities, Mahama claimed that “every public university was initiated and built by the NDC.

“All the NPP knows how to do is name universities people have built. After NDC builds the university, then they would come and name it after one of their heroes,” Mr Mahama said.

A clip capturing Mahama making the claim has been posted on Twitter here. Some online news portals, such as 3News, also reported it. 

Can the National Democratic Congress be credited with establishing all public universities in Ghana?

Verification

This is not the first time a figure in the National Democratic Congress has made such an assertion. 

In the 2020 General Elections run-up, a spokesperson for the Party on Creative Arts, Rex Omar, said that the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology was the only institution not built by an NDC government.

DUBAWA Ghana investigated the claim in 2020 and found it to be false.

In that report, we established when the National Democratic Congress as a political party was formed. We also delved into historical events to ascertain whether the political party, while serving as an elected government, played a role in forming any of the nine public universities in Ghana as of 2020.

“Besides the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) and the University for Energy and Natural Resources (UENR), the NDC did not directly establish any other public university in Ghana. Records, however, show that the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) that birthed the NDC played a role in establishing UDS and UEW,” the report concluded.

While the number of public universities in Ghana may have increased since then, it does not change the verdict.

Conclusion

The claim by Mr Mahama is false. The establishment of the University of Ghana and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology predates the National Democratic Congress.