The Ghana Education Services (GES) has drawn widespread anger among the Ghanaian public for its subtle tribal undertones in its newly released textbooks for basic schools.
In one of the books spotted by Whatsup News, the textbook repeated the stereotyping of people from the Volta Region as addicted to voodoo.
Another book on history for Primary Six pupils totally destroyed the image of Ghana’s first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, describing in as a dictator who turned Ghana into a socialist stated.
“The leader of the party (CPP), Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, was a dictator whose command must be obeyed without complaining,” a section of the history book read.
“The CPP under the leadership of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah turned Ghana into a socialist state on which a lot of state resources were wasted,” the book stated.
The highly biased and historical revisionist textbook has been flagged as extremely dangerous to be taught to Ghanaians students.
The author of the history book did not hide what appeared clearly as an open biase towards Ghana’s first president, refusing to attribute a single positive policy that Dr. Nkrumah implemented during his six0year reign before Ghanaian collaborators worked with the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to overthrown Ghana’s first democratically elected president unlawfully.
Critics have pointed out that the textbook appears to be a reflection of the political ideologies of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) which had always been opposed to Dr. Nkrumah, and not necessarily a true reflection of Ghana’s objective political history.
Meanwhile, for the people of the Volta Region, the textbooks again reflect what the NPP has been often accused of as having a tribalistic agenda against Ewes from the region.
In more detail, the Member of Parliament for South Dayi constituency, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, took to Twitter to blast the government and the GES for pushing tribal bigotry and stereotypes against Ewes.
“This is the level this Govt has taken tribalism and stereotyping of Ewes. Today, it is being taught in our basic schools that Ewes like juju and so a certain Efo is used as an example of a juju man in a GES sanctioned Textbook for our children. When you talk they say don’t talk,” Rockson Dafeamekpor fired.
Already, Ghana’s social media is abuzz with angry remarks about the content of the textbooks. There has so far been no official response yet from the GES.