INAUGURAL ADDRESS BY REV. DR. EBENEZER MARKWEI

INAUGURAL ADDRESS BY REV. DR. EBENEZER MARKWEI.

PRESIDENT OF THE ODADEE FRATERNITY

Mr. Chairman, Nii La, Nii Shiketele, distinguished guests, Fellow Odadees, students:

I embarked on a tour of minds just before our election and after our election. I've listened to a sizeable number of members of our fraternity since our election into office. Some chats, I must confess, drove me to despondency seeing the enormity of the task ahead, but majority of these brothers, gave me hope for the future. I choose to ride on the latter and seek solutions for the former. No doubt in my mind is the fact that we are at a crossroad now in the history of our fraternity. We have a golden opportunity to RAISE OUR FRATERNITY TO NEW HEIGHTS where each and every one of us recognizes the fact that we are important stakeholders in the destiny of this brotherhood - THE ODADEE FRATERNITY.

Much talk and finger pointing has gone towards finding the reasons behind the stagnation and frustrating apathy of this organization. I'm not here to moan over the past and it's problems, I'm here to grab hold of the opportunities of today and make a contributing dash for the destiny of tomorrow. APATHY EASILY BECOMES THE BEDFELLOW OF ARMCHAIR CRITICS. Much talk and little action is a vexation to progressive minded people. Legless critics who sit back, talk and never get involved, become irritations to those in the trenches ready to contribute their quota to make our alma mater shine.

Each and every one of us have a few choices to make, we have a choice to wear THE coats of armchair critics or roll up our sleeves OR look for ways to improve the fraternity and CHANNEL OUR ZEAL AND TREASURES TOWARDS PROJECTS that will lift PRESEC. I do not necessarily see our current leadership in a messianic light, but rather, as men and woman ready to give TIME, TALENT and TREASURE to the FRATERNITY for onward transmission towards PROJECTS for PRESEC. The old leadership was composed of men and women who toiled under severe constraints of apathy, frustrating situations of ‘promise and fail’ by Odadees who made all the noise yet vanished when labour-ward commitment rang its bell. Empty promises weaken resolve and create cynicism that poisons the blood of trust and fuels disenchantment. The old order must change and yield place to the NEW. I salute the old leadership who held the fort under trying circumstances, made sacrifices beyond the call of duty and are still ready to stand by the new leadership to make float the ship aground of Odadee. Sail we must, fly we must, soar we must.

You can sit still no more, WE HAVE A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY BEFORE US. WE NEED TO GRAB THIS LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY, DURING THE LIFETIME OF THIS OPPORTUNITY. My team and I are your servants for 2 years. We will give our time, our talent and our treasures to the task ahead. We are ready to work with men and women who are:

1. CAPABLE 
2. WILLING 
3. AVAILABLE 
4. COMMITTED 
5. ARMED WITH CONSTRUCTIVE IDEAS

This is where we want to go. And two words sum up our aspirations for these two years. NUMBER 1: FRATERNITY

We have active or inactive year groups in the system. This is where we all started from as classmates, friends and partners. We need to strengthen our fraternity. Our aim is to make the fraternity:

1. VISIBLE
2. VIABLE
3. VIBRANT

We recognize that every year group has a lynchpin - a mover and shaker who has great networking skills and somehow finds ways to rally the troops - to get the groups going. We seek to enlist such people to help. We aim to DISCOVER, DEVELOP AND DEPLOY these by empowering them in every way we can, to strengthen the fraternity and drive year groups towards projects. We cannot be hidden anymore. We are Odadees, a host of great Achievers yet, silent. We cannot be hidden anymore. Sound the alarm, blow the trumpet let every Odadee hear, WE ARE ON THE MARCH. VISIBLE, we will be, VIABLE we will be, and VIBRANT we will be. We will traverse land, compass sea, and jet- fuel the air to rally the troops NUMBER 2: PROJECTS

The school faces a host of infrastructural issues that the scanty coffers of the sector ministry cannot tackle now. The Presbyterian mission might or might not want to tackle these issues themselves or may lack available funds to do so, and the PTA is also not yet ready to do so. THIS IS OUR SCHOOL, THIS IS PRESEC. I WAS IN ENGMANN HOUSE, WHERE WERE YOU? Each and everyone can help. Little drops of water make a mighty ocean. To be able to achieve this, we need these structures to be enhanced:

1. REVENUE GENERATION, BOTH LOCAL AND ABROAD
2. MARRYING FUNDS WITH PROJECTS
3. SOLID AUDITING TO INCREASE TRUST AND TRANSPARENCY

We HAVE set ourselves the task of collating a list of projects and making the list available on a touch-button basis to all. We want to get year groups to marry activity to projects. We seek to bring to a close, projects that were never completed. We seek to make trusted revenue collection points available and easily accessible everywhere - here in Ghana, and in the diaspora. Never should we hear the sentence "I have some money to give to Odadee association but can't find who to give to and I don't know whether that money will be used for the purposes assigned."Fellow Odadees, here we are today, beneficiaries of the various disciplines PRESEC offered. We passed through this great institution, slept in the dormitories, sat in the classrooms and sported on its fields. It is our turn to let our treasures pass through, to let our talents acquired, sit in this place with infrastructural monuments, to go make PRESEC, the place where the glorious light offered, opens up our eyes to possibilities and to let these possibilities ignite our passions and make a demand on our pockets. We have light and we will operate in this light to make Odadee and PRESEC stand tall.

In lumine Tuo Videbimus lumen.

In thy light, we shall see light