President John Dramani Mahama has expressed the need for a stakeholder consultation on Ghana’s educational curriculum to properly teach Ghanaian family values.
He says there wouldn’t be any need to make a legislation about Ghana’s family values if they were properly included in the curriculum to be inculcated into the children.
His comments come on the back of the fate of the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill also known as Anti-LGBTQ/Gay bill passed by Parliament but was not assented to by the President.
The bill, after its passage, could not be assented by then President Akufo-Addo to become law. Parliament was injuncted from forwarding the bill to the presidency and the President also from receiving it after it was passed in February 2024.
Speaking during an engagement with the Catholic Bishops Conference Monday, January 13, 2025, President Mahama indicated that there needs to be broader consultation on the bill for it to be passed.
He, however, indicated that it rather becomes a government-sponsored bill instead of private, adding that the best Ghana could bequeath its future generation would be to draft a curriculum that would help inculcate the values of the nation to the children rather than having to draft a legislation to that effect.
“I know what the promoters of the bill intend to do but I do think that we should have a conversation on it again so that if we decide to move that bill forward, we move it forward with a consensus and probably it shouldn’t be a private member’s bill, it should be a government bill with government behind it after consultation with all the stakeholders to see how we should move it forward.
“But it leads us back to the discussion we had that if we were teaching our values in school, we wouldn’t need to pass a bill to enforce our family values and that’s why I think even more than the family values bill is us agreeing on a curriculum that inculcates these values into our children as they are growing up. So that we don’t need to legislate it so I’m looking out to this review conference to come into some consensus on some of these issues,” he stated.
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