Perhaps the most quoted person at Ashesi commencements is the German playwright, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whom I must nonetheless quote again. Goethe famously said, and I quote, "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it". My name is Ndze'dzenyuy Lemfon Karl, and I have the honour to tell of the genius, power and magic that are the hallmarks of the class of 2022.
Nana Oteng-Korankye II, Nananom, the President of Ashesi, Dr Patrick Awuah, our Distinguished Guest Speaker, Sir Samuel Esson Jonah, Alumni and University Leaders, Dear parents and well-wishers, Ladies and Gentlemen, Honourable members of the class of 2022.
As I took the stage, the beautiful green scenery reminded me that we were seated on a football field. Why is football relevant to this discourse, you may ask? Why talk about football on our commencement day? To that, I respond rather lightly, the class of 2022 is a footballing class, blessed with more-than-splendid footballers; Benjamin the GOAT, Sosa, Daniel Arthur, Nathaniel, Berko, Ayomah, Erin, Adzo, Fafali, and many more. As a team sport, the celebration of victory in football is a celebration of collective effort and a strong statement of a team's identity and desire to conquer. That, dear friends, is the raison d'etre for this convening. Today, by our presence and celebration, we all pay homage to ourselves as a daring team, our coaches, faculty and staff, and our ever-supportive fans, friends and families. We also, by our celebration, make it known to the world that we are ready to charge at it, that we are prepared to spring forth the greatness perfected in Ashesi's refining fire over the past four years.
Time is indeed but a fleeting moment. It feels like only yesterday when we, like many before us, participated in the initiatory rite of drinking from our calabashes. I can vividly remember being stunned, as were many other onlookers, as I walked past the sight of our then freshmen engineers indefatigably persuading Dr Danyuo Yiporo that they deserved full marks for the boats they had spent all night testing. But time, especially when spent at Ashesi, is also a great teacher. After many sleepless nights, hundreds of presentations, a thousand quizzes, and Dr Sena's presentation grilling, we are clearly not the naive boys and girls we were four years ago. Quite recently, a couple of friends and I shared a good laugh when we chanced upon our admission essays. We struggled to imagine that, at some point, that was our writing at its best. In that laughter is ingrained the veracity of the assertion that the past four years have been years of immense growth and transformation, for which we owe an outstanding debt to the fantastic members of staff and faculty of Ashesi University.
Our four-year journey has been unique, marred with enormous vicissitudes of fortune, yet rendered memorable by our heroic perseverance, sense of community, and leadership par excellence. Whenever the iron curtain of challenges seemed to rise higher than our wings could raise us, whenever fear shot us down to the bottomless pits of despair, we rose together, as a unit, beyond the struggle. In 2018, we were Ashesi's largest incoming class; four years later, we today become Ashesi's largest graduating class, a big deal from our first day to our last day. In all these, I am convinced, perhaps like all other class speakers before me, albeit backed by more facts, that all of us will remember the class of 2022 as Ashesi's finest.
Our time at Ashesi shares much in common with a football game; we had two halves on campus with a COVID-induced halftime at home. The warming up we did during AIX and orientation week was far from enough to prepare us for the exacting standards of Drs Louis Asiedu, Rebecca Awuah, Gordon Adomdza and Heather Beem. While the tempo after kick-off was unexpectedly intense, vibing to fantastic music from Yaw Brown, a.k.a Wings, and Mathias Mukasa Mulumba did relieve some stress. In their barking freestyle, they reminded us that time is money and money is time, so don't waste your time online. However, as we strove to find our feet as a class, a host of our versatile classmates were setting examples for us in non-academic domains.
Who could fathom the depth of Idriss Raaj's programming genius, who taught his very own classmates at DSC sessions? Benjamin Darko and Bright Ocran laid the foundation for what eventually became legendary Ashesi Premier League careers, and Bridget Adatsi, Nathaniel Oppong, Padi and Abigail Yayra demonstrated their business savvy. On the other end, the Facilities Team had to remind Kofi Omari, Daniel, Anthony, Kebede and Andrew Duncan that too much slam-dunking would destroy the basketball rims. Who can forget that memorable crazy day in 2019, our very first encounter with a culture that will later on give us the bragging rights as the class that introduced the amazing Spydee to Ashesi? Academically, as non-academically, we were then, as we now are, at our finest. As we looked forth to making more of a statement in our second year, the pandemic blew the whistle for halftime, and home was calling.
To this day, it remains hard to tell if having to spend some time learning online was a good thing. What we do know, however, is that more than anything we experienced in the past four years, nothing brought to live our endurance, resilience, boldness, and sense of community as this halftime period of online learning. Few of us seated here will forget the help we received from our friends in Misters Sampah and Warren's Web Technologies class. Neither will we forget how we helped each other in Dr Cooke's International Trade and Mr Stewart Isaac's Thermodynamics classes. Like the 300 at the battle of Thermopylae, we stood together as a unit, one behind the other, and no challenge was insurmountable. Remarkably, many of us began our real career journeys online. In previous years, the joy of travel often lightened the burden of summer internships.
But our year was to be unique. We had to do our internships in the same environments in which we completed the semester; sitting in front of our screens and sighing in desperation each time ECG updated their power-rationing schedule or MTN's network caused that colleague of ours to remind us that we could turn off our video, or that it was time to type instead of speak. But we were at our finest, and we were professionals. Suffice it to mention that it was in the thick of these challenges that our year group started and grew most of its businesses; Manuel and his team's TechHaven, Nathaniel and his team's Go Inside, and Lindiwe Mutungamiri's LITH initiative, to cite a few. Words cannot describe what boldness it must have taken to dream when the night was as dark as peat. Even when the challenge seemed insurmountable, we were, as we are now, at our finest.
Class of 2022, my fellow graduates, even the basest of despair did not extinguish your little candle of hope. You have been resilient and supportive of one another, and you have been your finest. The deadlines? Of course, we missed them! Who never miss deadline before hands in the air. No hands! Thank you to that balance sheet that did not balance; to that marketing strategy that did not market; to that code that did not compile; to the website that only showed Mr Sampah errors; to the project that started reading random numbers the moment Dr Nathan decided to check; to the slide that vanished in the middle of the presentation. All the struggle we experienced in the past four years is what gives meaning and purpose to our celebration today, and I am confident that we will look back at these years fondly.
I recall the jubilation that met the announcement that we would be allowed to return to campus; halftime was over. With enthusiasm renewed by how long we had missed our friends, we flooded into campus, hoping that whatever facets of the college experience we may have missed online would be made for before graduation. Little did we know that capstone was real. While some of us were trying to understand what was going on, Naayi and Vera Bordah had built their capstone project and were dishing out pressure during presentations. Dr Korsah's signature post-presentation question, "So what problem are you solving" made 4th June seem farther than it appeared on the calendar.
However, the never-ceasing drama in our class WhatsApp group did ensure that no headline event was taken without a remedial dose of humour. Francis Ocran, Ebenezer Sarpong, Ambrose Dery, Sapara-Grant and the company of Charlotte boys were determined to ensure that even if staying in our rooms had become a habit, the class WhatsApp group would maintain and strengthen the incredible bond we created in the preceding years. I would bet my money that they succeeded at that, as we have a constant stream of people wanting to join the WhatsApp group, waiting for whoever mistakenly leaves. Whatever challenge capstone prepared for us, Eyram Tamakloe, Andrew Duncan & Issahaku Wallaman-i still gave us excellent projects. Our genius did not fail us. As such, while capstone was daunting, we joined Spydee to say Kunkra as we rose to our finest.
Today is twice a special day; Ashesi is 20 years old. This convening is equally a celebration of the boldness, genius and power of a twenty-year-old dream, and the class of 2022 is immensely proud to be jointly celebrated today. We thank Dr Patrick Awuah and the early visionaries for the gift of quality education in our backyard. A quality education is that great leveller, the giver of opportunity to those who would otherwise not have it; it is that excellent eye-opener, the perfect tool for empowering and adequately orienting the leaders and problem-solvers of tomorrow. I take the liberty to think that our graduation falling on the twentieth anniversary of Ashesi's founding is not only a coincidence. It is fate's way of assigning to our class a unique assignment, mainly to confront the inaccessibility of quality education on the continent.
The era of one child, one book is now behind us. Circumstances now unveil the era of one child, one quality book. As we leave Ashesi, let us leverage our world-class education to be ambassadors for quality education. Let us be the reason why a young Cameroonian, Malawian, Zimbabwean and anyone from the countries we each represent will get a world-class education in their backyard. In doing so, I believe that we will, directly and indirectly, contribute to the transformation of our dear continent. We say a big thank you to all our donors. Your generosity has given hope to communities all over the continent. If you ever were unsure about the impact your donations have, I urge you to look no further than this stage; many of my peers and I are a product of your benevolence, and our gratitude knows no reservation.
We are immensely grateful to our lecturers who endured the rock-and-roll Berekuso roads to mould us into bold, intelligent and resilient men and women. More so to those who did not see the fruit of their labour; Professor Benony Gordor and Professor Ekow-Otoo. I am privileged to have been taught by both men, and I cannot but speak of what fine men they were. I recall the academic disaster that ensued when Prof Gordor tried to make us election forecasters in the Ghana 2020 presidential election build-up. We did sub-par work, but being the ever-magnanimous man he was, Prof kindly gave us meaningful criticism and a chance to redo the work. Prof Ekow was no different; he once asked a question in class, and it was immediately apparent that we were not following. He laughed and reminded us that it did not matter if we followed as his next assignment would ensure we understood everything. And it sure did. Both men were keen pedagogues, for whom every minute of student interaction was a golden opportunity to impart the knowledge they had honed for decades. To every man upon this earth, death cometh sooner or later. And how can man die better than in the service of those he loves? We will deeply miss them.
Our appreciation would be incomplete if we did not extend it to our parents, who have stood behind us. Please permit me to share with you a childhood story. When I was younger, my mother made me attend a graduation ceremony of medical personnel in her stead. Needless to say, I was not too fond of the idea. However, it was at that ceremony that I met for the very first time an intellectual in the sense of the word. This intellectual, majestically clothed in a beautiful robe, inspired me with his erudition. This experience immediately birthed a life-long dream to acquire my own robe and be steeped in as much scholarship. Today, I am delighted to have my robe. But that may have been impossible were it not for the direction and vision of my strong mother. I believe that I speak for my entire class when I say that today is but a culmination of us being elevated to the dreams and visions of our parents through their enormous sacrifice. Dear parents, you can take pride in knowing that you did a good job.
An alumnus recently reminded me that in the same way college was more demanding than high school, the world would be more challenging than college. To that, I instinctively quipped, much to the delight of eavesdroppers, "Yes, I know, but let me enjoy my graduation!". While I definitely want all of us to enjoy our graduation day, perhaps there was some truth in my dear alumnus' words. However, I exhort you, honourable members of the class of 2022, to demonstrate the same boldness, genius and power that you have shown against any challenge we have faced in the past four years. Let excellence and finesse be your watchword and guide. Will there be challenges? Certainly. Will we be bold, and endurant, and resilient, and magical in our confrontation of these challenges? Absolutely. And will we triumph? Why not! This class does not hide even in the darkest night, and on that account, we are victors today, as we will be tomorrow. Whatever is coming tomorrow will meet us, like always, at our finest.
What we may have called the football game for graduation is now over, and like the good old Black Stars, we emerged victoriously. On that note, then, we triumphantly declare kick-off for the much longer football game that is life. We do so gleefully, with certainty that the courage, determination, and endurance that saw us through these four years will again see us through. As such, let it be our task, even as we start a new game, to keep alight the triune torches of scholarship, citizenship and leadership. So that in every vicissitude of fortune, in every stratum of society we may find ourselves, our class may present a worthy example of excellence, leadership and service. And may carry on even to our old ages the glorious traditions and excellent lessons we have learned at Ashesi. To paraphrase the most splendid of statesmen, Sir Winston Churchill, let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if Ashesi were to produce a thousand more classes, posterity would still say that this was her finest class; bold, intelligent and magical.
You did this your way, and I hope you enjoy every moment of the amazing things ahead of you. Congratulations, Class of 2022; Ashesi's finest.
Thank you, and may God bless us all.