In three years, my goddaughter will graduate with a rare combo of two important qualifications from a university in America: a Doctor of Medicine and a PhD.
Hopefully, I would not have to borrow a suit to attend her graduation when she calls upon me.
Some 27 years ago before she was born, her dad and I had the unforgettable experience of having to wear the same suit for our graduation ceremonies at two separate universities, several kilometers apart.
After donning the suit at KNUST to receive his Geography and Law degree, he quickly dispatched it through a kind commercial driver to Accra, where I would also use the same suit to collect my English degree at Legon.
A few years later, Nana Yaa was born. In legal terms, that Katamanto political suit is Nana Yaa’s senior by nearly three decades.
Dilly-dallying and lollygagging
The last time I spoke to the young lady, she did not have the luxury of time to talk about the history of suits; she was busily preparing to defend her thesis.
A PhD or a medical degree is a particularly painful undertaking. They require unalloyed academic discipline and wilful sacrifices of all human pleasures, including food.
A faulty theoretical framework or botched laboratory experiment sends you right back to the beginning, which carries grave implications for the methodology.
You can’t fake anything in the process. Yet, the statistics show that while many PhDs and MDs give up on the way, a lot of pretenders walk about freely with fake degrees.
Some have built successful careers in academia while others ended up in politics.
The commentaries on Dr Anne Sansa Daly’s qualifications have been particularly unkind to the young lady, even if she faked them.
Those commentaries have conveniently avoided any query about our collective culpability in the making of Dr Daly, and other interesting pretenders we have tolerated and celebrated in nearly every department of our national life.
Haven’t we tolerated prophets who dish out false visions like confettis to confound even the most brilliant ones among us? Haven’t we tolerated strange experts on radio who pretend to pronounce the national verdict on our thorniest matters?
We celebrated politicians and policy wonks for merely lollygagging (idling about) while all of us dilly-dallied about how to fix basic problems like filth in our country. We looked on while people paid their way to erect mansions on ramsar sites at Sakumono, so we can pull them down.
Fake it till you make it
The facts of Dr Daly’s public appointment are not as sketchy as the origins of her medical degree from the prestigious Johns Hopkins university.
Yet it is her appointment to the NHIS board that gave her away. We didn’t fault the managers of the television station that offered Dr Daly space to educate us about our health, just as we were happy when herbalists provided the cure for galamsey.
We have wittingly endorsed a lifestyle that rewards ambitious people who are sold to the dictum of ‘fake it till you make it’. And we have seen them fake it quite well.
Dr Daly allegedly had the blessings of some of our revered men of God who tell us who wins elections in Ghana.
Apart from her medical degrees, these social credentials would qualify Dr Daly for any appointment in a society hooked on degrees, money exhibitionism, and blind faith in God to supply all we have ever needed.
We set Dr Anne Daly up. We set her up to fail long before she traveled to the USA.
Anytime you hear a politician say ‘I stand on existing protocols’, before they proceed to deliver their speech, they are effectively saying that they endorse our suspicions, suppositions, and desires.
By appointing Dr Daly onto the NHIS Board, President John Mahama merely stood on existing protocols.
How do we spot a fake PhD or medical degree? In Dr Daly’s case, we understand a concerned Ghanaian wrote to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to find out about the brilliant alumna who allegedly graduated with a 4.0 GPA.
The university had replied with a dismissive one liner: “Hello, we are unable to locate a record under this name”.
Johns Hopkins did not have the patience to dignify the request by repeating Dr Daly’s name in their response. That is how academia treats fake credentials: they dismiss them as if they never happened, to save writing ink.
How to spot a fake doctor
For people who toiled to acquire PhDs and higher medical degrees, like Nana Yaa and her colleagues, they may not be as charitable as Johns Hopkins.
They feel betrayed and cheated when a fake person takes their shine and steals their glory.
It resurrects the carcass of their long nights of sweat when they prayed to find their supervisor in a good mood before they present the next chapter of their thesis in the morning.
In the PhD journey, the state of your supervisor’s marriage could tell how they rate your literature review or data analysis.
If they are angry at life, they visit your research with angst and suspicion.
They are at liberty to strike out the same chapter they approved earlier in the month, to have you start all over again.
How were we supposed to know that Dr Anne Sansa Daly didn’t go through this gruelling routine to become a medical doctor? Experts say the best way to spot a fake PhD or MD is to simply sit one down with their favorite waakye, look deep into their eyes and ask them to tell you about their research.
If you don’t see profound sadness sitting atop their eyelids like a fog, and spot the morose writings on their foreheads that read like a replay of panic meetings with supervisors, then the person is fake.
Somebody on social media suggested a smart criterion we could have deployed to see through Dr Daly: If a person is motivated to build up large hips, dress libidinously and pose for selfies, they might not have the discipline to put in seven years to be a medical doctor. I will check this with my goddaughter.
Tissues Of The Issues
bigfrontiers@gmail.com.
Ottawa, Canada
By Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin
