Creating new regions an irrational pathway to development – Prof Gyampo

A professor at the University of Ghana, Ransford Yaw Gyampo, has expressed his disagreement with the creation of new regions stating that it is an irrational pathway to the quest for closeness and development.

According to him, as long as the district assemblies serve as agents of development within the regions, there will be challenges of limited and late release of funds, corruption and lack of qualified personnel, as such the creation of new regions will serve no meaningful purpose.

“Additional regions would not lead to the disappearance of the problems that confront district assemblies operating within the regions,” he stated.

The head of European Studies at the University of Ghana wrote on his Facebook timeline that allowing those who only like the yet to be created regions to vote does not make sense.

“If such an important exercise is to be held among those who already want a new region, then a Yes or No voting would be superfluous as the Yes would record near 100 per cent. The exercise, in my view, should have been held in the entire affected regions and those opposing should have exercised their constitutional right to campaign against it,” he stressed.

Prof Gyampo wrote that the ruling made it so easy for the Yes to win.

“Those opposing it underwent some surreptitious intimidation from some chiefs and people who wanted a Yes Vote at all cost. Indeed, it looked politically unwise for any politician to openly oppose the Yes Vote and I am sure this partially explained why John Mahama openly showed his Yes Vote to the camera,” he noted.

Ghanaians in the six proposed regions of Oti, Savannah, North East, Western North, Ahafo and Bono East regions last week voted massively in a plebiscite to endorse their creation.

Declaring the results on December 28, 2018, the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Mrs Jean Adukwei Mensa, said all the six proposed regions met the threshold of 50 per cent voter turnout and 80 per cent voting YES.

A summary of the results declared by the EC showed that the NO vote was unable to garner even one per cent of the valid votes cast in the respective regions, with Oti recording the highest NO vote of 0.89 per cent, while Ahafo, with 99.68 per cent, edged North East, which had 99.67 per cent, as the area with the highest percentage of YES votes.

Read Prof Gyampo's full statement