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Achimota School discriminating against Rasta students – Professor

Professor David Millar, a former Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University for Development Studies (UDS), has chastised the management of Achimota School for discriminating and denying admission of two students over their dreadlocks.

Achimota school

He said the authorities have not been fair to the Ghanaian students with dreadlocks who gained admission to the school and questioned why some foreign students with long hair will be admitted.

"You can tell the students to wear their hair but try and keep it neat. It would have been objective and fair if the school had said at their entrance that all those coming to school, cut your hair and enter," Prof Millar said.

In an interview on Accra-based Starr FM, the Professor said "We know products of that school who have ended up becoming Rastafarians after school. They weren't Rastafarians in school yet they became one after school. You can't allow someone with long hair to enter and then prevent someone who's wearing dreadlocks, that's discrimination…the total image of that school is being questioned. Is it a school for a selected few?"

He suggested that the wearing of dreadlocks or rasta hair is not the sole preserve of any religion in the world.

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"For me, I don't see the direct relationship between dreadlocks and religion because historically dreadlocks precede religion…Rasta hair is not synonymous with any religion, it has only been adopted by a religious group as their image.”

"For me, the discourses are not well-positioned. They should come out and say what's fundamentally wrong in wearing dreadlocks and convince some professors who wear dreadlocks that it’s a bad thing," he noted.

The Director-General, Prof Kwasi Opoku Amankwa of the Ghana Education Service (GES), directed the school to give admission to the students.

However, the Achimota School refused to bow to pressure from the GES to admit students with dreadlocks.

The school rejected the directive following an extensive meeting between management, officials of GES, and the parents of the two boys.

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Lawyer for the Rastafari Council, George Tetteh Wayo, said the Council is looking to get the student admitted to another institution.

"The kids will still go to other schools, we know other schools will still admit them. The young man who had six (Aggregate 6) is part of a triplet, his two sisters have gotten admission at St. John’s Grammar," he said.

Tetteh Wayo believes rejecting the dreadlocked students denies such kids the right to achieve their dreams.

"So if Achimota School wants to be adamant when Kwagyiri Aggrey and our forefathers were building Achimota School, they built it with the idea to chime out, to educate the black man.

"They did not build the Achimota School with the notion that somebody's dreadlocks must stop him from becoming Ghana’s first astronaut," he noted.

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