Accra: Professor Ahmed Abdulai Jinapor, Director General of the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), has pledged to provide the necessary technical and policy support to the National Defence University (NDU) to function effectively. He expressed the Commission's strategic support relative to the country's socio-economic disposition to be the best in the West Africa sub-region.
According to Ghana News Agency, Prof Jinapor gave the assurance in Accra when Major General William Agyapong, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), and his team paid a courtesy call on him. The meeting was to formally introduce himself to the Director-General and further explore enhanced collaboration between the two institutions. Prof Jinapor reiterated that the NDU was not a military university, adding that all programmes within the defence architecture in the security services must be routed through the university.
He commended the military for being the most disciplined institution, adding that the University had a key role to play as far as the government policy of making national service personnel undergo mandatory military training. He urged the leadership of the University not to drift from its core mandate of the programme, saying, 'We want you to stay in whatever you are doing and do it and do it well.'
'I think that the University still qualifies to be given any kind of support that a public tertiary institution is supposed to receive. Unfortunately, we've already done our disbursement for GetFund, but I called the budget officer to this meeting for us to see how we can work around it to accommodate you this period,' he said. He said there were certain basic things that the university needed, pledging to see how the Commission could support the institution to be efficient.
'In fact, if this institution is able to stay and stand the test of time, I believe strongly that most of the issues, including security issues and discipline, would be mainstream,' he said. He stressed that there were so many security issues going on in the country, adding that the illegal mining issue could be tackled from the defence perspective and from their own appreciation of how the issues needed to be solved.
Major General Agyapong commended Prof Jinapor for facilitating the processes for the University to receive its charter. He announced the appointment of Air Vice Marshall Felix Adom Asante as Acting President of the University and appealed to the commission to work in collaboration to ensure the right things were done. He said the team had discussions with GetFund to foster collaboration and chart the path forward on the needed support for the University.
The CDS appealed to GTEC to facilitate the restructuring processes of the military institutions to deal directly with the University. The Ghana Armed Forces was among 14 private universities to receive the prestigious Presidential Charter on Thursday, 19 December 2024, to establish NDU. The presidential charter granted will now have the Kofi Annan International, the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College, the National College of Defence Studies, the Ghana Military Academy, and the Training and Doctrine Command become Colleges of the NDU.
