Asiedu Nketia narrates how he 'pushed truck' to earn money
Jonas Danquah 
The General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia has narrated how became a ‘truck pusher’ to raise money to buy forms to write the teacher training entrance exams.
Mr Asiedu Nketiah said he had been banned by his family at the time from furthering his education, in a bid to force him to take over his uncle’s cocoa business.
“When I left middle school, because I had been banned not to attempt to aspire to go to secondary school, I didn’t know what to do”, he said.
Narrating the story on Joy FM’s Personality Profile, the NDC scribe said, in spite of the challenge with the family, his desire to study took him back to his middle school as a volunteer to tutor those preparing to sit the exam he had passed with distinction.
He then decided to try his hands at the Teacher Trainee College exams, which many had failed in, and tried to discourage him from attempting.
“I decided to sit for the 4-year teacher training college admission exams. In those days some of my teachers had written it for 10 years and they had never passed. And so when I took a decision to do it, I discussed it with some of my friends they said no, you can never pass that one”.
Unperturbed by his colleague’s discouragements, he decided to go ahead with the plan of writing the exams.
He however needed to raise money to write the exams, since he could not afford the entrance forms as required.
Asiedu Nketiah said, the situation at the time, pushed him to be a truck pusher to him some money, to afford the teacher trainee entrance exams.
“But I told myself I will just give it a try. But…I couldn’t ask for money from my parents or my uncles so I decided to engage in truck pushing. So I mobilized ₵14 at that time and bought the forms for ₵9 and took pictures and wrote the exams,” he revealed.
He said, he was not able to tell his family that he had written the exams, out of fear of being beaten.
He mentioned that, a time came when his uncle had a change of mind to finance his (Asiedu Nketiah’s) educational exploits, because his wealth had been described as ‘useless’ since he had no scholar in his family.
He added that, at the time his uncle had made the decision to help him, was coincidentally, the same period he received the results from the teacher training college exams that same week.
“Within that week, the postmaster came to our house and handed me a letter. When I opened [it] I had passed my exam and I had been offered admission to St. Joseph’s Training College”.
After completing the training college, he pursued courses in “business administration, stock brokering, subsequently went into banking and finance” and more recently a Master of Science degree in Defence and International Politics from the Ghana Armed Forces Command College in 2019.
The latter, he explained was because his new role as the Vice President of Socialist International (a worldwide organisation of political parties which seek to establish democratic socialism) requires him to be up-to-date with issues with terrorism, globalization and international politics.
