By Prince Ahenkorah
Over 100 Ghanaian PhD students in the UK have fired off a desperate petition to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, begging for mercy as unpaid scholarships a toxic inheritance from Kingsley Agyemang’s tenure at the Scholarships Secretariat push them towards deportation, eviction and academic oblivion.
The £32-35mn debt pile, owed to some 110 British universities since 2021, stems from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) era under ex-Registrar Dr Kingsley Agyemang, now Abuakwa South MP. Students at UCL, Warwick, Liverpool and others report 2-3 years without maintenance cash, frozen 2023-24 tuition, library bans and stalled graduations.
‘Administrative recklessness’, says group leader Prince Komla Bansah; some hit food banks, dodge rent courts or lean on family loans. Visa curbs kill side hustles.
Enter the blame game. High Commissioner Zita Okaikoi (Sarah Zita Benson) has gone nuclear on Agyemang, accusing him of ‘reckless’ award letters sans funding lagging £500,000 owed Loughborough Uni for 17 students since 2022.
London Mission sources say Agyemang’s freewheeling greased palms: kickbacks via proxies, scholarships doled to girlfriends and cronies for ‘favours’. The Fourth Estate’s prior digs exposed elite capture NPP execs, Akufo-Addo kin, double-dippers pocketing £291,000+ in 2019-20 alone fueling whispers of a pay-to-play sex scandal.
Agyemang, who morphed Nkrumah’s ‘brilliant but needy’ lifeline into patronage fodder, parries: mere ‘connections’ and admin slips. No guidelines surfaced despite RTI prods. Now MP, he’s stonewalling as the Mahama NDC paints him fiscal vandal.
New Registrar Alex Asafo-Agyei dispatched to London for payment haggling admits the rot: NPP audit underway, fresh UK slots halted. But unis are bailing on instalments after broken vows tied to Agyemang’s spree. Some 30 PhDs haven’t seen tuition since 2024; visa letters lapsed amid manual-record mayhem.
NDC milks it: inherited ‘monumental scandal’ widens inequality, trashes Ghana’s universities ties. Minority firebrand Clement Apaak dubs it ‘greed’; ISSER’s Peter Quartey wants blind vetting, no VIP lists. NPP counters with cleanup dawdle claims, but Agyemang’s star dims kickback probes loom if audit bites.
Students seethe: their futures collateral for elite largesse. Starmer’s door may buy time, but Accra must cough up and nail Agyemang’s role. Without forensic scalpel on favours and slush, the Secretariat stays a crony ATM.
Sources close to the Secretariat; student petition; Fourth Estate data. Next week: audit deep-dive.