Teachers declare ‘war’ against headmistress in Bongo over student riot, alleged abuse of power

The rain that fell across the Upper East region early on Monday, 29 July 2024, was very heavy and persistent.

It forced several people to stay indoors for an uncertain duration and caused some, who were not sure the situation would change, to suspend their plans indefinitely.

But it was not enough to cancel the demonstration some teachers of the Gowrie Senior High/ Technical School had scheduled and announced days earlier.

When the recurring downpour took a short break, temporarily decreasing into an unstable drizzle, the teachers marched from Bongo District, where the school is located, to the premises of the Upper East Regional Education Directorate in the region’s capital, Bolgatanga.

They were determined to have the headmistress of the public school, Elizabeth Zinye Paaga, removed from office for a number of reasons. Those reasons were contained in a petition they would present to the press later.

But when they went upstairs to meet up with the regional director, Bright Lawoe, they were told he was not in the office because he was indisposed.  

Long before the demonstration cropped up, the regional directorate had received two petitions at separate times from different parties about the headmistress. Monday’s demonstration became the next course of action after the regional director allegedly failed to act on the two previous petitions lodged with the directorate.

Upon returning from the regional director’s office, the teachers spoke to the press inside the regional education directorate’s yard.

The May 26 riot

One of the accusations directed at the headmistress was in connection with a riot that broke out at the school on Wednesday, 26 May 2021.

Narrating how the riot happened, the petitioners said the headmistress spotted three male students suspiciously sitting around some rocks outside the school’s campus and summoned them for interrogation.

All but one of the students responded to the call instantly. The one who did not respond immediately to the call was carrying a bag.

As his colleagues approached the headmistress, he rather left the spot for a classroom and left the bag there. After that, he joined the other two students before the headmistress, who was already questioning his companions.    

Suspecting that the students were harbouring some illicit stuff in the bag, the headmistress asked that a teacher go into that classroom for the bag for a search. The teacher himself did not know the classroom in question. Led by a student, he found the classroom. But he did not find the bag.

For failing to produce the bag, the school’s authorities, who felt they had been outfoxed by the students, punished the entire class. The class was made to weed a large portion of the school’s compound. A reprisal from the punished students would follow.

When the sun was about to set, the senior students suddenly ordered all junior students to move out of their dormitories without delay. Although the order was strange, nobody, except one boy named Stephen Akisime, disobeyed it. He said he had just washed his school uniform and would not leave until it dried.

In an instant response to his uncooperative posture, the senior students beat him up. And after they released him, the boy reported the assault to his housemaster.

The housemaster went with the senior housemaster and four other teachers to the boys’ dormitories to take action on the report. When the senior students saw the six men approaching, they scattered, fleeing in different directions.

However, they grabbed hold of one of them and left the scene with him, with expectations that he would assist them in identifying all those who partook in the assault.

Around midnight, a riot erupted on the campus. Students hurled stones at teachers’ quarters and teachers reportedly replied with stones fired from catapults. Gunshots ripped through the air. But nobody knew who pulled the trigger.

Later, police vehicles raced to the school, carrying armed law enforcers. As the riot continued, police officers chased some male students for arrest. Some female boarders telephoned their families from inside locked dormitories with a panicked tone in the dark, accusing the police of brutality.  

Subsequently, a committee was instituted to unravel the causes of the riot.

The demonstrating teachers claimed the headmistress, rather than talking about what led to the riot, told the committee the unrest stemmed from some amorous relationships existing among some teachers and students of the school.

“How can the headmistress extricate herself from blame and introduce tangential issues of amorous relationships and power hegemony which have never been problems in the school?” the teachers rhetorically asked during their demonstration.

Committee’s report and a ghost white paper

According to the teachers, while the committee was still making its inquiries, the headmistress also was “gladly” sharing its preliminary findings with her confidantes.

And after the committee completed its work, no one else among the school’s staff but the headmistress got a copy of its report.

Some teachers asked for a copy of the report from the Bongo District Education Directorate but the directorate reportedly declined their request with the excuse that the findings and recommendations contained in it were not to be disclosed.

“Why should a report to the school become the headmistress’s bona fide property? Was the report given to her in her personal capacity or as the head of the school?” they asked.

The teachers said the headmistress subsequently told the school in 2022 that a “white paper” had been issued on the committee’s report and claimed the “white paper” had directed that five members of the school’s staff be released (transferred) from the school. The five people she cited were said to be devoted critics of her administration.

The five staff include: the assistant headmaster for administration, Peter Dabilah, who died on Tuesday, 2 April 2024; the staff secretary, Francis Nyaaba Ayamga; the information communication technology (ICT) teacher, Ernest Kudamu; the head of entertainment department, Awinbisra Issaka; and the science teacher, Emmanuel Bien.

The teachers said the “white paper” was the headmistress’s own creation, aimed at getting rid of the five staff. They strongly defended the staff, saying they were not involved in any riot or amorous relationships with any students and were not given any opportunity to defend themselves before the committee against such accusations.

“Regrettably, our very existence as teachers cannot be guaranteed under the current vindictive leadership style which is hell-bent on destroying every decent teacher who holds contrary views to the headmistress. We have unassailable evidence that no white paper recommendation for the reposting of five teachers came from Accra.

“Indeed, rather than empathise with the teachers who suffered destruction to their properties and emotional trauma at the hands of the rioting students, the headmistress, in her true elements, did not only scheme to axe teachers from the school but tried to tarnish their reputation by linking their release to adverse findings of the committee and for that matter a white paper,” they said.

Inconsistent transfer letter served on key teacher during exam period

Francis Nyaaba Ayamga (mentioned earlier in relation to the “white paper” transfer) is one of the school’s highly experienced teachers.

He has been teaching English Language and Literature in English in the school since 2011. He was among the teachers whose official quarters and personal belongings were vandalised during the May 26 riot.

On Monday, 22 July 2024— nearly four months after Dabilah’s death— Ayamga received a transfer letter from the regional director of education.

“I wish to inform you that you have been re-posted from Gowrie Senior High/Technical School to Azeem-Namoa Senior High/Technical School to teach English Language and any other subject of your competence with effect from 2nd July, 2024,” said the letter, dated 26th June, 2024.

The letter also partly read: “You will bear the full cost of your transport expenses to your new station as well as your transfer grant since the movement is at your own request”.

Ayamga was the only one handed such a letter among the “targeted” five staff.

Dabilah had died months before that development. Bien (the science teacher) had left the school on a voluntary transfer in September, 2022.

Kudamu (the ICT teacher) and Issaka (head of the entertainment department) did not receive any transfer letter and were still part of the school’s staff.

The following day, a surprised Ayamga went to the regional director’s office— not to object to the transfer even though he did not like it— but to make it clear that he never asked for it, contrary to what was stated in the third paragraph of the letter.

Seeing what the teacher was talking about as he pointed at the paragraph, the regional director took the letter from him and called his secretary to his office.

When the secretary arrived, he asked him to retype the letter, ignore the disclaimed paragraph and bring it back to him. Then, Ayamga was asked to wait in the human resource manager’s office.

Minutes later, the secretary returned with an amended version of the transfer letter. The regional director signed it and the secretary sent it to Ayamga in the waiting room.

He took the letter and left, still in shock. It was later discovered that the old letter, which the regional directorate “was supposed” to have withdrawn before Ayamga left the office, was mistakenly clipped to the edited version and reissued.  

Reactions from observers

For a number reasons, news of Ayamga’s transfer did not sit well with many people including teachers, students and residents of Gowrie, the community where the school is located.

His relocation to a remote school, which also requires crossing a bridgeless river to reach particularly in the rainy season, would cause some distress to him and his family.

The circumstances surrounding the transfer, which some observers believe are subtly linked to the riot in which he played no role, would tarnish his reputation and leave an indelible blot on his career.

And the timing of the transfer, taking effect in the last preparation month before the start of the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), also may adversely affect the examination candidates who were already accustomed to the teaching technique of the transferred teacher.

Some stakeholders describe the transfer as “senseless” because it should not have happened in the middle of an academic year and “insensitive” because the teacher should have been told in advance about the transfer since it was not on disciplinary grounds.

Demands from demonstrating teachers

During the demonstration of that Monday, the teachers mentioned names of some old staff they claimed the headmistress had “hounded” out of the school for voicing dissenting views since she became the school’s head in 2019.

The names include: Roland Boti, Festus Akurigo, Stephen Adongo, Stephen Akantuge and Fuseini Ndekugri. The rest are: Grace Nelson Awaa, Enoch Obeng Darko, Noella Atule, Lucy Abajong, Ellis Dalaba and Adabre.

The teachers further alleged in their petition that the headmistress was in the habit of hoarding “scandalous letters” in staff’s personal files and lodging petitions against them at the Bongo District Education Directorate without copying them just to keep them from knowing about the petitions and consequently defending themselves.

“We have incontrovertible evidence that the headmistress has stashed many teachers’ files with damaging letters without the knowledge of the teachers.

“We demand, in the strongest terms, to see the contents of our files in the presence of management so that they can help us appreciate how and when certain documents find space in our files,” they said.

Adding to that, they stated: “Indeed, this touches on the existence and welfare of the teacher and we will, within the ambit of law, stop at nothing in our demand.”

They claimed discipline among the students of the school had collapsed under her watch and accused her of appointing junior teachers into positions of authority over their senior colleagues.

“It is commonplace to see students of the school flout school rules and regulations with impunity. In addition, the manner in which disciplinary cases are handled in the school is appalling.

“How can students absent themselves from school as and when they like and for many weeks or months without the school punishing them?” the teachers added.

The demonstration ended with a warning from the teachers to down tools in demand for the headmistress’s removal and in protest against Ayamga’s release from the school.

The headmistress did not immediately tell her side of the story when Media Without Borders contacted her on Wednesday, 14 August 2024.

Her reasons were that she had not been served a copy of the petition and that she would need permission from the regional director before engaging the press on the allegations levelled against her in that petition.

When this media outfit telephoned the regional director afterwards, he said the headmistress would seek his permission if the allegations were “relevant” to her.

The regional director went on to defend his own action, saying he could transfer any teacher as he pleased just as football coaches could substitute players any time.  

He further stated that Ayamga’s transfer had nothing to do with the 2021 riot and, explaining why he initially indicated in a letter he signed himself that Ayamga asked for the transfer, he said his own secretary was to blame for it.

“You see, these secretaries, what normally happens is that when they type a letter for Mr A in the past and want to type a similar letter for Mr B in the future, they would not type all over again; they would just pick some portions and pick some other portions.

“Unfortunately, that’s what happened. Francis never applied for transfer. So, I recalled that letter and deleted that clause from the letter. And I even told him it was not meant for him because it was a mistake,” he said.

The Bongo district director of education, Ibrahim Mumuni, declined to comment on the telephone, requesting for only a face-to-face interview, when this media outlet contacted him on Thursday, 15 August 2024.

He was contacted because a portion of the petition says his office refused to release a copy of the committee’s report when some concerned teachers asked for it on the grounds that the findings and the recommendations contained in the report were confidential.

On Tuesday, 13 August 2024, Media Without Borders met with Francis Agyeere, a former Bongo district director of education who chaired the committee that investigated the causes of the 2021 riot.

He said he had no knowledge of any “white paper” and made it clear that the committee did not recommend a transfer of any of the school’s staff in its report.

The author of this report contacted the headmistress again via WhatsApp before the publication of this story. She did not tell her side of the story.

Media Without Borders has obtained a copy of the committee’s report and will serialise the findings and recommendations contained in it in the days ahead.  

Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org/Ghana