Separate sheanut and cocoa boards - Chiefs demand

Three regional houses of chiefs – Upper East, Upper West and Northern regions – have kicked against the lumping of the sheanut industry with the Ghana Cocoa board.

The President of the Upper East Regional House of Chiefs, Naba Sigri Bewong, says he and his colleague presidents of the three houses of chiefs have sent a petition to President Mahama, demanding the separation of the sheanut industry board from that of cocoa.

They want a separate board for the sheanut industry, to be situated in any of the three sheanut-producing regions.

Naba Bewong said this when he chaired a national forum on the transformation of the Northern Savannah of Ghana, underway in Bolgatanga.

According to him, the decision to put the two together is hampering the development of the sheanut industry, and if nothing is done to separate them, the sheanut industry will not develop.

The forum, which started on Monday October 25, and was expected to end on October 27, 2016, is being organised by the Coalition of SADA Zone Civil Society Organisations, and targeted at the presidential nominees of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Convention People’s Party (CPP) and the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).

However, on Monday, the NPP presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, did not show up. A former Northern Regional Minister under the erstwhile NPP administration, Prince Imoro Andani, stepped in for Nana Addo at the eleventh hour.

Mr. Andani told the audience the NPP will transform the SADA Zone, through the industrialisation of agriculture, and reiterated the party’s plan to change SADA to the Northern Development Authority, should the party win power.

Similarly, Ivor Greenstreet, CPP presidential candidate also did not show up. His party’s parliamentary candidate for Talensi Constituency, Clinton Bukari, represented him.