Damongo (Northern Region) -– The Catholic Bishop of Damongo in the Northern Region, Rev Philip Naameh has criticized the National Reconciliation process, describing it as being politicised and partisan.
Rev Naameh said to limit the issue of national reconciliation to a political period of to reduce it to atrocities of military governments, was to create a fertile ground for conflict rather than for reconciliation.
“A national reconciliation has to go beyond that,” the man of God maintained. Rev Naameh made the criticism in his keynote address at the 19th National Congress of National Union of Ghana Diocesan Priests Association.
The five-day congress being attended by priest all over the country is under the theme: “National Reconciliation, the Role of the Diocesan Priest.” The congress would among other things, examine the necessity of national reconciliation and the role of the church.
Bishop Naameh explained that it would be more useful in the reconciliation exercise to extend healing and rebuilding of the country beyond the political life of Ghana over the past 44 years.
“We have experienced inter-ethnic and chieftaincy conflicts which disrupted social harmony and underdetermined human development effort efforts and these need to addressed,” he stated.
Rev Naameh mention the 1994/94 conflict in the Northern Region, the 2000/01 destructive spiral of violence in Bawku in the Upper East, the Wa Chieftaincy case which was still not resolved and the Yendi Skin crisis saying that all those conflicts needed to be resolved if Ghana has to attain true reconciliation.
He said that the National Reconciliation Commission must look at the issue of the land tenure system that had rendered some people landless in their own country to avert a situation where people would become “domestic aliens”.
“Reconciliation is a journey. Acknowledging it is the beginning of the journey, ignoring it is sowing a seed for conflict,” he remarked.
According to him, the reconciliation exercise ought to be a national reconstruction exercise. The Upper West Regional Minister, Mr Mogtari Sahanun, regretted that several chieftaincy disputes remained unresolved mainly because people had refused to accept reconciliation.
Out of the 17 paramount chiefs in the region only nine were functional with the rest engulfed in protracted disputes and yet, they had refused to accept reconciliation and dialogue, he noted.
The Regional Minister called for special prayers from the clergy for God’s intervention so that people could have a changed heart and strive for peace and reconciliation as the only way of enhancing development.
