All public universities will open by 15 June 2020, Vice-Chancellors Ghana has assured President Nana Akufo-Addo, in line with his easing of COVID-19 restrictions to allow final-year students to return to campus.

Addressing the President at the Jubilee House, the Chairman of Vice-Chancellors Ghana, Prof Ebenezer Oduro, who is also the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, said: “You gave an order – that was a presidential order – that universities should reopen on the 15th of June”.

“I think somewhere last week, some of the media carried news, and I am sure probably some may have gotten to you, that some universities have defied the President’s orders and are unwilling to open. Mr President, let me assure you that, that is not the case at all”, Prof Oduro said, adding: “All Universities are obliging to reopen and none of us is defying your orders”.

“Come the 15th, that is Monday, all universities will reopen as you have directed”, Prof Oduro stressed.

According to him, the Vice-Chancellors “believe that the orders were given in sole contest and that tells us that we need also to apply wisdom and sole level of discretion in getting the students to campus to complete their academic work”.

In his remarks to the Vice-Chancellors, the President said: “We know here in Ghana, we have examples, very painful examples of what happened to generations of Ghanaians whose education was interrupted, sometimes, by purely political events not by pandemics, but by political events and it’s taken a long time for those who were the victims of these political interventions in the life of our educational system, to recover and for our system to recover”.

“If there is any way we can prevent this generation also suffering in their evolution from the pandemic, we should do so”, the President said.