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Bishops in Ghana Petition President for Catholic University Charter

Some of the Catholic Bishops in Ghana at the opening of 2019 Plenary Assembly in Cape Coast on November 11, 2019

At a recent courtesy visit to their country’s President, Nana Akufo-Addo, Catholic Bishops in Ghana presented a petition requesting for the Presidential Charter to the Catholic University College of Ghana (CUCG) located in Fiapre within the Sunyani Diocese.

“Your Excellency, we will appreciate it very much if you could kindly grant our University a Presidential Charter for it to be an independent degree-awarding institution,” the President of Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference (GCBC), Archbishop Philip Naameh, said November 6 during their visit at the Flagstaff House in Accra.

He continued, “The university (CUCG) is ripe to be granted a Presidential Charter, in order to improve upon its facilities.”

“There is the need for the university to ensure excellence by building stake-holder confidence, creating a conducive academic atmosphere and increasing academic programmes,” the Archbishop said on behalf of his brother Bishops.

The Ghanaian Prelate further said that their Catholic institution of higher learning, which has been in existence since 2003 had submitted an application requesting for the Presidential Charter to the National Accreditation Board in January 2019, the body responsible for accreditation, regulation and supervision of tertiary institutions in the West African nation.

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He also expressed the hope that the Bishops’ “application would be considered by next year to enable the CUCG, currently affiliated to the University of Ghana, Legon and the University of Cape Coast, to be autonomous in the awarding of degrees to its students.”

By receiving a Presidential Charter, CUCG will be freed from the affiliations it has and attain the capacity to award its own degrees, which are currently being offered by the Universities of Ghana and Cape Coast. 

This is not the first appeal by the Bishops’ to grant the University College a Charter.

In June 2018 when President Akufo-Addo attended the 20th celebration of the Holy Spirit Catholic Church at Nkwabeng, Bishop Mathew Kwasi Gyamfi of Sunyani, where the University is located, appealed to the President of Ghana to grant the Presidential Charter.

Archbishop Naameh described CUCG as an institution with a “high calibre of academic staff” which had now come of age and matured enough to manage its own academic affairs.

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Granting the institution a Presidential Charter would enable it to move into the next level to translate the vision and mission of its establishment to serving the nation better, the Prelate emphasized.

Leaders of other religious denominations have made similar applications that seem to be characterized with delays.

In October 2017, the President of the Presbyterian University College in Ghana, Prof. Emmanuel Adow Obeng petitioned that the Government grants Private Universities “that have gone through successful mentorship for ten to fifteen years Automatic Charter Status to help reduce the fincial burden on Private Universities”