I attended a childhood friends’ wedding ceremony at the Trinity Presbyterian Church at Kwashieman in Accra last Saturday. It was not just another wedding ceremony but an opportunity to catch up with some of our mates after over 23years of writing our Ordinary Level Examination at the Ghana Secondary School in Tamale. (Please allow me to use this medium to congratulate the couple, Mr. And Mrs. Kwabena Dorbu.)
Characteristics of any meeting with enlightened colleagues, we spoke some politics and of my unsuccessful attempt in the last elections to represent my constituency in Parliament. We were all proud that an Old Boy was even now the President of Ghana with some Old Boys occupying some key positions in his government.
This is not time to recollect all what transpired at the wedding as we at a point had to join in the Borborbor dance which was at play there. It was a day my Borborbor dancing skills were clearly at play.
However one question I was asked that nearly made me angry was whether the current President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, was a Northerner. It was asked by another Old Boy who was unenthused about some of the policies of President Dramani Mahama which in the view of that colleague were anti-Northern and would rather even impoverish the very people who the policies of the NDC government should have been of huge benefit to.
He told me the President was behaving as if he had forgotten his background in relation to some of his policies. It was when he started talking about policies that I calmed down to listen to him into detail. He enumerated a series of issues and policies that he thought were not Northerner friendly and proceeded to enumerate some which I will recount here.
Firstly, he was totally outraged that President Mahama presided over the abolishing of trainee allowances for Teacher Trainees. He told me the three Northern regions by official statistics were the poorest in Ghana. He added how allowances at the Teacher Training Colleges were not only a source of motivation to students from poor backgrounds but also was used to support other social obligations of some of the students.
I honestly agreed with this totally. I attended a Teacher Training College after my Ordinary level in 1990. However before I completed my training as a teacher in 1993 I had all my Advanced level grades which I wrote privately with the aid of the allowances I was picking up as a student.
So I agree with him that, it was a policy misjudgement for someone who himself benefited from some of these things during his education in Northern Ghana to gladly agree to its scrapping when he became President. President Dramani Mahama definitely got this very wrong! It is not late to rethink this policy.
The other issue that came to play was the introduction of the payment of utility bills in Senior High Schools by a President who had education absolutely free in his time as a Northerner. It was ironic that whilst the NPP promised free Senior High School education, the Presidency of Northerner Dramani Mahama not only increased school fees for secondary schools but also introduced the payment of electricity and water bills by parents! Northerners will surely be hard hit with such an obnoxious policy.
Whilst Northerners were happy that with John Dramani Mahama as President, all funds under the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority fund (SADA) would be released and accelerated development made available to Northerners and others in Ghana, the reverse is the case. Not only is adequate money denied the SADA fund, but also SADA funds are being pumped into rearing non existing guinea fowls and planting of ghost trees!
The pain is that, it is a Northerner who is presiding over the affairs of Ghana now and these criminal-like things are happening to his own people.
The President attended Ghana Secondary School free of charge and had his education yet the interior roads of the school are so deplorable to an extent that one is always tempted to ask if the school has produced any notable alumni at all!
The School Feeding Programme which was set up to benefit students including Northern students at the basic education level is fading into oblivion. The National Health Insurance Scheme is now a “Paracetamol” Scheme. Free maternal health care which was of huge benefit to the Northern woman is now virtually a poltergeist of its own self at a time a Northerner is President. No wonder many Northerners who felt President Mahama would have brought enormous development to the North are fast losing confidence in him.
Farming which is the pre-occupation of the people is in shambles. Unemployment is at a level unprecedented in the history of Ghana under the Presidency of Northerner Mahama. Apart from National Service, school leavers are also living in very deplorable and hopeless situations without jobs at a time a Northerner is President.
President John Dramani Mahama reminds me of a song the late Lucky Dube once sang titled: “My brother, my enemy”. In the song are the words “not all blacks are friends and not all whites are enemies”
A word to the wise is enough.
Akilu Sayibu,
Email: Akilu.sayibu@live.uwe.ac.uk
