Stop misrepresenting Ayensu-Danquah’s foreign Professorship – Ayamga-Adongo tells GTEC
Prof. Michael Ayamga-Adongo, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), has urged the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) to focus its efforts on individuals deliberately abusing Ghana’s academic system, rather than public officials whose titles may have been conferred under different academic jurisdictions.
Speaking on Channel One TV’s Breakfast Daily on Tuesday, August 19, Prof. Ayamga-Adongo cautioned against portraying Deputy Health Minister and Essikadu-Ketan MP, Dr. Grace Ayensu-Danquah, as deliberately misleading the public.
“I don’t think the Deputy Minister wants to beat the system. It is just that she comes from a system that described her as a professor, and she is bringing it here.
“What is not helping her case is trying to project it as if it is equivalent to what happens here. Was she a professor in the United States? Yes. Can she hold herself as a professor, maybe outside? Yes. But not in the university here. These are the intricacies of the issue,” he explained.
His comments come in the wake of a directive by GTEC cautioning Dr. Ayensu-Danquah against presenting herself as a professor. In a letter to the Chief of Staff at the Presidency, the Commission revealed that it had asked her to provide documentary proof of her appointment by August 11, 2025.
Her legal team, led by David K. Ametefe, responded on August 8, arguing that she was appointed an Assistant Professor of Surgery by the University of Utah in the United States. They further insisted that GTEC had no authority to demand evidence of such an appointment, since it was made outside Ghana.
However, GTEC maintained that the documents submitted contained inconsistencies. A letter signed by Prof. W. Bradford Rockwell, Vice Chair for Academic Affairs in the University of Utah’s Department of Surgery, confirmed that Dr. Ayensu-Danquah had been appointed as an Adjunct Assistant Professor, not Assistant Professor as initially claimed by her solicitors.
According to the Commission, omitting the term “Adjunct” was misleading. It clarified that the role of Adjunct Assistant Professor is a non-tenure-track position, which, under Ghana’s academic framework, equates to a part-time lecturer, not a senior lecturer, and certainly not a professor.
Meanwhile, Dr. Ayensu-Danquah’s lawyers have strongly criticised GTEC’s actions, describing its correspondence as unwarranted and an attack on her professional reputation, and have therefore given it a 14-day ultimatum to provide a basis for questioning her professorship.
Source: channelonenewsonline