Sawla DCE awarding contracts to himself – NPP executives

Executives of the New Patriotic Party in Sawla in the Northern Region are demanding the removal of their District Chief Executive, Lawal Tamimu.

This is after the wife of the DCE allegedly assaulted the party’s constituency chairman, Mohammed Fuseini, who came to their residence to demand a refund of money he borrowed the DCE doing his confirmation.

At a press briefing in Sawla, the party executives said they could no longer watch on as the DCE continues to make the party unpopular in the district.

The constituency chairman explaining reasons for their demands accused the DCE of incompetence and misconducts.

According to Chairman Mohammed Fuseini, the DCE was awarding contracts to himself, sidestepping their authority, neglecting and disrespecting the party base in the district, engaging in divide and rule and peddling falsehoods.

“If you go to Kooyiri D/A primary he went to do the renovation himself, if you come to Sawla township, three (3) toilets he did the renovation by himself. Go to Sawla community center, Zogbeni JHS, if you go to Kole the same thing and he and his wife are having six (6) school feeding contracts,” the chairman told Starr News at the briefing.

He continued, “as for consultation it is zero percent; it’s out. He runs the party as if it’s he and his wife’s company. He has made the party unpopular. The party is not attractive because he does things alone. Wherever he is going he does go with the executives. Recently he was going to d a thank you tour and he was going alone and we have never seen such a thing. He just neglected the board completely. We tried to bring him on board but still, he’s not ready to listen to us”.

When asked to provide evidence to back his claims of the “divide and rule” allegation against the DCE, he answered; “you know we have the party and government, as I speak to you we are 17 in number, he has managed to convince 2 and they are following him. For example, he went to write on social media that he’s paying the executives Gh1,500, then the constituency chairman Gh3,000 so we told him to come and deny that information or I will come and that’s why I’m speaking to the media now”.

Explaining briefly how the attack on him by the wife of the DCE occurred, he said he went to demand an amount of GH37,000.00 he borrowed the DCE during his confirmation session last year. According to him, the DCE has failed many times to pay back the money so he went to the residence in the company of two other party executives to demand for the money.

According to him they met the DCE’s absence when they got to the residence but the wife who met was angered that the chairman had come two “strangers” to disgrace her husband started raining insults on him and later slapped him and asked him to leave her husband’s house.

The constituency secretary, Jonathan Laamiitey, also said he was “terribly surprised” by the conduct of the DCE and added calls for him to be sacked.

“This was somebody who was a constituency organizer, he worked as party executive and he knows what it means to be a party executive. During the 2016 campaign, we moved out with him. All the promises we made to the people he witnessed them, all the demands the people made, the conditions the people gave us and voted for party, he was a witness to them, so he shouldn’t have been somebody that will be chased around to do what he’s supposed to do for the people, and so when he starts to behave like these, that’s what makes me surprise and very sad”, Jonathan lamented.

The secretary said the party executives in the constituency have informed the regional chairman, Mohammed Samba, regional Minister Salifu Saeed including the NPP General Secretary John Boadu about the conducts of the DCE but nothing has been done.

He said the party’s laid down channels for addressing internal grievances have failed them and they are no longer able to carry out party activities in the constituency.

“I don’t need to create lies on somebody I have worked with before. I don’t need to destroy him, I need him to work; when he works very well he would earn good name for himself and the party would benefit from that good name but as we talk now, NPP is a laughing stock in this constituency. If you appear anywhere and called yourself an NPP Executive, you are a mockery to the people simply because our DCE is a failure and the failure has affected all us”

The DCE has refused to comment on the allegations.