Tamale Youth reacts to description of Dagombas as "warlike"

Tamale, Nov. 4, GNA - The Tamale Youth Association (TYA), has described as outrageous and unpardonable a social studies text book publication for Senior High School (SHS) students that described Dagombas as war like people.

The book titled, "Practical Social Studies", was co-authored by Joseph Kofi Yeboah and David Obiri Yeboah. The paragraph six of page 417 stated that: "Lifestyles are not determined by natures. The warlike Dagomba, the business-oriented Kwahuman and the co-operative and truthful Akwapim person and the culturally sensitive Ashanti all confirm the influence of culture on personality and everyday life of the people".

Mr. Albert Atutiga, Vice President of the TYA said at a press conference in Tamale that it was regrettable that such a textbook had been adopted by the Ghana Education Service for use in the SHSs in the country without a proper review of it. He said textbooks were meant to impact factual knowledge to students and not assumptions or imaginations.

Mr Atutiga noted that if one is to write a book for students, that person needs to do a good research at the grassroots to unearth the facts and figures.

He said it was therefore clear that the authors did not do much research on the culture of the ethnic groups they were writing about. He said Dagombas were not "warlike" as the book wanted the students to believe adding that; Dagombas had their own internal chieftaincy problems, which kept erupting from time to time but they had never gone to war or prepared to go to war with any other ethnic group since these modern times. Mr. Atutiga said the TYA was therefore calling on the Minister of Education and the Director General of the Ghana Education Service to correct the blunder. He also asked the two authors to render apologies about the error.