A 22-year-old Senior High School graduate’s dream of becoming a nurse is gradually slipping away as she watches hopelessly.
“It’s devastating to see those I completed school with go to school and even complete and I’m still sitting at home,” she stated.
Despite forfeiting admission to pursue her dream at the Nursing and Mid-wifery Training College at Gushegu a month earlier due to her inability to pay admission fee, Naaki-Kidatu Tunteya Yakubu was full of hope in October 2023 when she narrated her predicament to this reporter.
“Even though my dream of being a health worker is crushing, I believe that isn’t the end of the world. There’s hope. There’s life so there’s hope” .
She completed SHS in 2020 and was among the few out of the many, who after going through the application processes, were offered admissions to study diploma in Registered General Nursing (RGN) at the Gushegu NMTC.
She received the admission notification via SMS on September 1, 2023 and was required to make an upfront payment of 4,295 and present a draft of the payment to the school on or before September 12, 2023.
The notification indicated that “you will be replaced by the deadline” if she didn’t meet the requirement.
Naaki-datu and her parents could not come up with the money by the deadline and had to plead for more time.
The school was magnanimous enough to grant their request to make an exception for her by giving her more time to pay the fees.
But the little over 4,000 was too much for her and her parents to afford even with the extension.
“She had admission, but we couldn’t afford the fees,” Naaki-datu’s mother said.
The 22-year-old lives at Tindonsobligo, a suburb of Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region, with her parents and her 4 siblings.
She is the fourth child of her father and the first child of her mother.
Her father, Yakubu, tailor and Arabic teacher, suffered stroke in 2021 and has yet to recover.
The little money her mother makes from her sewing business goes into her father’s medical bills.
Naaki-datu works as a salesgirl to support her mother cater for the family’s needs and save for her education.
However, the household needs including her father’s medical bills swallow almost every pesewa they make, leaving her with little or no money at all to save towards pursuing her academic dreams.
She, therefore, could not afford the fee and thus, forfeited her admission.
“Due to the father’s health issues, there’s no money. We’ve spent all the money he had, yet he hasn’t recovered. So we asked her to hold on and when we get someone who will help, she will go,” Mrs. Yakubu stated.
Naaki-datu is a young woman full of dreams and aspirations.
“I have always thought of doing great things,” she said.
Becoming a nurse isn’t her only aim.
“The second thing was to be a graphic designer, because I sketch and paint. I have also thought of going into real estate”.
When she failed to take up the admission offer last year due to financial constraint, she was hopeful of support coming her way to enable her start tertiary education the following year.
But the year has almost ended and that hope for support is turning out to be but just an illusion.
State support system
Naaki-datu is among numerous young Ghanaians, whose hopes are fast fading into despair and their dreams gradually slipping away before their very eyes.
That shouldn’t have been the case. This is because the state, recognizing that economic conditions of some citizens could inhibit their progress and their strive to contribute to its development, has put in place support systems to assist them attain higher education.
The Students Loan Trust Fund and the state instituted scholarship run by the Scholarship Secretariat are some of the support systems that provide financial assistance for the education of the less privileged.
However, these support systems have, over time, been mismanaged, rendering them ineffective.
For someone like Naaki-datu, the Students Loan is not an option.
That’s because she will only be eligible for the loan after she has paid her admission fees and accepted as a student.
But even if she manages to pay the admission fee, disbursement of the students loan is irregular and thus, unreliable.
Some beneficiaries could start and end a semester without receiving a penny.
Aside from the delay in disbursing funds to beneficiaries, the loan is inadequate to cater for fees, accommodation and upkeep despite recent improvement.
If she had met the financial demands of the admission offered by the Gushegu NMTC, she would be entitled to a monthly allowance.
The trainee allowance became a subject of political campaign in 2016 after the then government led John Dramani Mahama scrapped it.
The then opposition New Patriotic Party denounced the decision to scrap it and pledged to restore it.
Indeed, it has been restored after the party won power in 2016. But it is seldom paid.
The 2017 – 2020, 2018 – 2021, 2019 – 2022, and 2020 – 2023 batches of trainees had not received any portion of their allowances as at June 25, 2024, according to the Ghana Nurse-Midwife Trainees’ Association.
This means they did not receive any allowance in their 3-year stay in school.
It took querying of the Vice-President and flagbearer of the NPP by a nursing trainee at a rally for monies to be released to clear 5 to 6 months arrears owed those, who were in their first, second and third years at the time.
The state scholarship is meant to help fund the education of academically bright but needy students.
It is run by the Scholarship Secretariat, which was established in 1960 with a primary mandate of providing local and foreign scholarships to this category of students.
However, an investigation by The Fourth Estate revealed that brilliant but needy students were often overlooked in the award of scholarship in favour of those with political and social connections, who are mostly affluent.
Thus, the state support systems have failed to offer any support to the likes of Naaki-datu, who are in dire need of same.
Unless benevolent individuals or organization come to her aid, Naaki-datu’s dream will continue to remain a dream.
