On October 30, 2025, I respectfully petitioned President John Dramani Mahama to reconsider the proposed arrangement for the establishment of a university in the Savannah Region through a partnership between the Government of Ghana and the Catholic Church.

My intervention was never an argument against the establishment of a university in the region, nor was it an attempt to discount the enormous contribution of the Catholic Church to education, healthcare, and human development in Ghana.

It was, and remains, a genuine concern about the long-term consequences of committing substantial public resources to an institution whose ownership, governance, and future direction would be shared between the State and a religious organisation.

Months after making that intervention, I remain convinced that the Savannah Region needs a fully fledged public university owned by the government and people of Ghana. If anything, subsequent developments have strengthened that conviction.

The government's determination to establish the university is commendable. The political will appears to exist, resources are being considered, and there is clearly a desire to leave behind a major tertiary educational institution in the region.

My concern, therefore, is not about whether the government is committed to the project. It is about the institutional model through which that commitment is being pursued.

I believe there is a better alternative and, importantly, one that does not require the government to abandon the progress already made or wait until an entirely new university campus has been constructed from the ground up.

The Savannah Region already has considerable government-owned educational infrastructure that can provide the foundation for a public university.

In Damongo, we have the Damongo Agricultural College and the Nursing and Midwifery Training College, together with other public facilities that could be assessed, expanded, and strategically utilised. Bole and Salaga similarly have existing public educational and institutional infrastructure that can support selected faculties, departments, and programmes.

Rather than approaching the establishment of a public university as though every lecture hall, laboratory, office, library, and residential facility must first be newly constructed, the government can begin with what the state already owns while progressively developing permanent university infrastructure.

This, in my view, presents a practical pathway for establishing a public Savannah university without placing an unreasonable immediate infrastructural burden on government. Damongo could serve as the central administrative headquarters and principal campus of the university, while Bole and Salaga host selected schools, faculties, departments, and specialised research centres.

The existing institutions would not necessarily have to be abolished or stripped of their present mandates. Their facilities could be strategically co-hosted, expanded or shared where appropriate, particularly during the formative years of the university, while dedicated facilities are progressively constructed.

There is considerable merit in such a model beyond the question of cost. A university structured across Damongo, Bole, and Salaga would immediately acquire a truly regional character. It would ensure that the economic and developmental benefits associated with a university are not concentrated in one municipality.

Students, lecturers, researchers, and supporting businesses would create new economic activity across the region. Accommodation, transportation, food services, construction, research, technology, and other services would grow around these campuses.

In effect, the government would not merely be establishing a university; it would be creating interconnected centres of economic and intellectual activity across the Savannah Region.

The academic structure itself could reflect the comparative advantages and existing infrastructure of the respective locations. Damongo’s agricultural training infrastructure provides a natural foundation for programmes in agriculture, agricultural technology, food systems, climate adaptation, renewable energy, and related sciences.

Existing health-training facilities can support the gradual development of nursing, public health, and allied health programmes. Bole and Salaga can similarly host schools and departments suited to their infrastructure, economic characteristics, and strategic location.

As the government constructs permanent facilities over the years, these initial academic centres can mature into specialised campuses of one integrated public university, with Damongo maintaining the central administration.

The planned teaching hospital makes this proposition even more compelling. The government's decision to invest in a teaching hospital in the Savannah Region represents an enormous public commitment and presents a rare opportunity to build an integrated public system of tertiary education, medical training, research, and healthcare.

If the state is going to finance and own a teaching hospital, there is a compelling institutional logic in linking that investment principally to a public university and a public school of medicine and health sciences.

This is where my concerns about joint ownership become even more pronounced. A teaching hospital is not merely a healthcare facility. It is central to medical education, clinical training, specialist development, and scientific research.

Once substantial public resources are committed to both a university and a teaching hospital, questions of ownership, governance, and institutional control become much more consequential. We must therefore ask not only what arrangement works today, but also what arrangement will remain workable twenty, thirty, or fifty years from now.

The individuals negotiating today’s arrangements will not remain in their positions forever. Governments will change. Ministers will change. University administrators will change. The leadership of the Catholic Church will also change.

Institutional priorities will evolve. What happens when future parties disagree over appointments, funding, expansion, academic programmes, property, access to the teaching hospital, management structures, or the use of infrastructure financed by the state? What happens if government continues to inject significant public resources into the institution over several decades and questions subsequently arise about control and ownership?

These are not questions raised out of suspicion of the Catholic Church. They are the ordinary governance questions that responsible institutional planning requires us to contemplate. Good relationships today are not substitutes for sound structures tomorrow. Institutions intended to exist for centuries must be designed beyond the goodwill and personalities of the people establishing them.

This is why I continue to believe that a partnership between government and the Catholic Church should not necessarily translate into joint ownership. Partnership and ownership are fundamentally different concepts. Government can partner with the Catholic Church in education, healthcare, research, and social development without jointly owning a university with it.

Our public universities maintain extensive partnerships with religious institutions, private organizations, development agencies, foreign universities, and industry without surrendering or sharing their fundamental public ownership.

The Catholic Church should therefore be encouraged to proceed with its ambition to establish a Catholic university in the Savannah Region. Indeed, government should provide appropriate support within the framework available to private and faith-based educational institutions.

A strong Catholic university would be an important addition to the educational landscape of the region and could complement the proposed public university in many areas.

But let the distinction be clear. Let the Catholic Church establish a university that it fully owns, governs, and develops according to its educational mission, and let the Government of Ghana establish a public university that belongs fully to the people of Ghana. The two institutions can collaborate rather than share an ownership structure whose implications may become increasingly complicated with time.

In fact, having two universities could ultimately be far more beneficial to the Savannah Region than creating one jointly owned institution. A public university and a Catholic university could coexist, collaborate, and even compete positively in academic quality, research, and innovation. They could undertake joint research, exchange faculty, collaborate on healthcare programmes and pursue international partnerships together.

The region would benefit from two centres of higher learning rather than placing substantial public and private aspirations into one institution with potentially complicated ownership arrangements.

The most important point, however, is that government does not have to build an entirely new public university before it can establish one. The existing public infrastructure in Damongo, Bole, and Salaga fundamentally changes that calculation. We have a foundation. What is required is to properly assess it, upgrade it and organise it under a coherent university system while the government simultaneously develops permanent facilities.

The initial public investment can therefore be directed towards strengthening existing facilities, providing modern laboratories and ICT infrastructure, expanding lecture spaces, establishing the administrative structures of the university, recruiting faculty, and beginning with carefully selected programmes. Construction of purpose-built facilities can proceed concurrently.

New schools and departments can be introduced as infrastructure and faculty capacity expand. What begins modestly can, through deliberate government investment, develop over the next decade and beyond into a major public university.

We should remember that universities are not defined merely by the number of buildings standing on the day they are established. Great universities are built over generations. Infrastructure can be expanded, campuses can grow, new faculties can be established, and laboratories can be modernised.

What is much more difficult to reconstruct later is the foundational ownership and governance architecture of an institution after enormous public resources have already been committed to it.

That is why I believe this decision deserves another careful consideration before the proposed joint ownership structure becomes irreversible. We should not make a permanent institutional compromise simply because it appears to offer the most convenient route today.

The question before us is bigger than the immediate establishment of a university. It concerns what kind of institution the Savannah Region will inherit and what relationship future generations will have with it.

The Savannah Region deserves a university that every child from Damongo, Bole, Salaga, Sawla, Daboya, Tuna, Larabanga, Buipe, and every other community can look upon as a public institution belonging to them in precisely the same way that other public universities belong to the people of Ghana.

Its doors must be open without questions surrounding religious identity or institutional ownership. Its assets must remain public assets. Its governance must remain publicly accountable. And every future investment made by the Government of Ghana into that university must unequivocally remain an investment in a national institution.

I therefore respectfully renew my appeal to President John Dramani Mahama and his government. The commitment to give the Savannah Region a university is commendable and must proceed. But I respectfully submit that the model deserves reconsideration.

Let us use the Damongo Agricultural College, the Nursing and Midwifery Training College, and other suitable government facilities as part of the initial infrastructure. Let us identify and utilize appropriate facilities in Bole and Salaga.

Let Damongo serve as the central administrative hub while faculties and departments are strategically distributed across the three areas. Let the government progressively construct permanent campuses and modern facilities as the university expands. Let the teaching hospital being developed with public resources become an anchor for medical education, clinical training, and research within this public university system.

At the same time, let the Catholic Church proceed with establishing its own fully owned university, and let government support that effort appropriately. There is enough room, enough need, and enough potential in the Savannah Region for both institutions to flourish.

This approach does not take anything away from the Catholic Church. It adds something permanent to the Savannah Region. It gives the Church its university and gives the people their public university.

More importantly, it protects the enormous public investments that government will make today and in the decades ahead from future questions of ownership, control, and institutional identity.

The decisions we make today must not merely solve today’s needs; they must survive tomorrow’s disagreements. The cordial relationships and good intentions that make joint ownership appear workable today cannot be guaranteed forever. What we can guarantee is the institutional structure we establish from the beginning.

I still firmly believe that joint ownership between the state and a religious institution carries potentially far-reaching consequences that may not become apparent immediately. With government already planning major public investments, including a teaching hospital, those consequences deserve to be considered before, rather than after, the arrangement becomes entrenched.

We have an opportunity to get this right without abandoning anyone’s ambition. The Catholic Church can have its university. The Savannah Region can have its public university. The government can support both, but it does not have to jointly own both. The infrastructure to begin already exists. The political commitment exists. The need is unquestionable.

What remains is to make an institutional decision that future generations will look back upon, not as an arrangement they inherited and must struggle to untangle but as an act of foresight that gave the Savannah Region a public university it could truly and permanently call its own.