Thursday, November 29, 2012

I AM GOING FOR MY CERTIFICATE - VICE PRESIDENT


Under pressure! There are questions about Vice President Amissah-Arthur's masters' degree.

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Wednesday November 28, 2012
Vice President Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur appeared confused yesterday about the exact date he completed his Masters’ Degree at the University of Ghana.

On a couple of platforms including the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) Vice Presidential Debate held in Takoradi on November 6, Mr Amissah-Arthur could not state emphatically when he obtained his Masters’ and could only say he got scholarship to do post graduate work.

At the Vetting Committee of Parliament where he was selected as Vice President, the former Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG) presented a Curriculum Vitae (CV) that indicated that he had his Master’s in 1976.

The pro National Democratic Congress (NDC) newspapers in their bid to defend the Vice President further muddied the waters by claiming that he completed his Masters’ degree in 1986.

Records show that from 1970 to 1981 his name is not on the list of students who completed their post graduate studies.

Apparently when Mr. Amissah-Arthur sought to set the records straight yesterday in a radio interview, he rather left more doubt about his Masters’ Degree.

 “I was one of the four students who were granted University of Ghana Scholarship to do postgraduate studies after my Bachelors’ Degree in Economics.”

According to the Vice President, when he was finishing the first thesis, there was nobody to mark it for him so he had to write another one for marking.

 “I finished the thesis in 1979 and then I was offered a job as a lecturer in the Department when the degree was awarded. The degree was awarded, I suspect or I believe, early in 1980 so anybody who is looking at the 1980 pass list in June will not see my name there because I would have been notified of the degree much earlier in January of 1980.”

He said “The problem that I have is that this was not a foreign university degree. It was a University of Ghana degree which was being offered and appointed in the University of Ghana. The Legon professors knew the work that I had done so there was no problem at all about a fake degree or whatever it is they are bringing in.” 

“If somebody is going to the end of an academic year and looking at the pass list and saying that your name is not there, he is looking at the wrong list. He should go to the University and they will tell him that some of these postgraduate degrees were awarded before the final exam degrees were awarded.” 

He said “because I knew I had done good work and it was the same university I didn’t even collect it. That certificate must be lying in the academic registry. Now that you people ask I am going to try to recover it”. 

Per his explanation, it was clear he did not have the certificate at hand saying “I haven’t thought it necessary to get my certificate. I am in the Brong Ahafo Region and when I come back I will go for it. They are lying in the academic registry” of the University of Ghana.

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