July 15, 2016 - The Private University Students Association of Ghana (PUSAG) held a leadership bootcamp at Ashesi for student government leaders of private tertiary institutions in Ghana. The bootcamp, on the theme Being a Generation Student Leader, was attended by representatives from over 35 private tertiary institutions.
PUSAG aims to build a common platform for private universities in Ghana to network and engage with one another while also acting as a mouthpiece on a national level. Opening the event, Richard Odame ’15, President of PUSAG, encouraged the student leaders to focus on leaving legacies others can build on. “As student leaders the essence of organizing this workshop is to help reengineer our mindsets to understand that taking up a leadership role is not about wearing a title or building our professional or political careers,” he said. “We should instead work towards leaving a legacy. The interests of the students we represent should be our heartbeat, and the anchor on which all our operations are centered on.”
The bootcamp involved a mix of lectures from guest speakers and breakout sessions with business leaders in industry. In a talk with the student leaders, Dr. Patrick Awuah encouraged them to work towards national development and avoid shortcuts. “We must not believe in the idea that private universities cannot be the same quality or better than public universities,” he said. “In order for the private universities to be really strong, we have to do the work. Just for our own sake, we need to do the work, but more importantly for the sake of our country we need to do the work. We need to live up to the expectation that we can help develop this country. So your challenge as future leaders is to remember that shortcuts lead to calamity. You need to make a decision that you’re going to be ethical. The journey towards that will be a profoundly positive journey for this country.”
The Deputy Minister of Education in charge of Tertiary, Honorable Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa also highlighted the need for student leaders to engage beyond their schools. “In the positions you are occupying as student leaders, you should remember to be humble and earn the confidence of not only students, but also of the citizens in the country,” he said. “We obtained that confidence in times past, because we were not selfish, we were not thinking about only our immediate environments. We were thinking about the country, and the continent. We were nationalistic and pan African in our outlook.”