John Dramani Mahama
National Nasara Coordinator of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Abdul Aziz Haruna Futtah has said the 2020 flagbearer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and former President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, has by his critique of how the Zongo Development Fund is being disbursed revealed his deep hatred for the Zongo Community, MyNewsGh.com reports.
He says the former president must be the last person to feign care for the Zongos in Ghana, because there is nothing to show in those communities for the long period that he has been in active politics, right from the district assembly level; “he didn’t build even a toilet in any Zongo community when he was in power”, he claims.
H.E John Dramani Mahama accused the Akufo-Addo government of misappropriating the Zongo Development Fund when he met with the executives of the Federation of Muslim Councils in Accra on Tuesday, indicating that, the fund must go into addressing major challenges of the Zongo dwellers and not on “insignificant things.
“We don’t want to come and put up a ‘romantic’ Zongo Development Fund for show and use it to make football pitches for people to play, teach our women how to cook waakye among others,” he said.
He further stated that, “we think that the issues facing the Muslim community are bigger than that. Access to education, how we put the children in school and keep them in school so that they don’t drop out.”
But speaking in an interview to refute Mr Mahama’s allegations on Accra-based Neat FM monitored by MyNewsGh.com on Wednesday, Haruna Futtah said,”when we are talking of people who love the Zongos, he (Mahama) doesn’t even come close at all; he hates Zongo people, he doesn’t like those who come from the Zongos; if he did, why couldn’t he build a common toilet facility in any Zongo community when he was vice president for 3 years and a president for four years”.
He said the initiatives being rolled out under the Zongo Development Fund are to lift families out of poverty expeditiously and not merely “romantic and insignificant” as the former president puts it.
“What is the one significant thing that he did in the Zongo communities; Mr John Mahama must go and learn the history of Zongo well if he thinks building football pitches in the Zongos are romantic; the Black Stars legends, Mohammed Polo, Sulley Muntari are all from the Zongos so you can see the Zongo folk are very passionate about football and it has lifted many families out of poverty”, he noted.
He noted further that, “Zongo has seen change and a real change; of the E-Blocks that President Mahama built, he didn’t site even one in any Zongo community, so he must stop pretending to love the Zongos”.
The Zongo Development Fund Bill, a campaign promise by then candidate Akufo-Addo in the 2016 election was passed by Parliament in November 2017 to establish a fund to accelerate the development of Zongo communities into places of wellbeing.
In November 2017, Parliament passed the Zongo Development Fund Bill which seeks to establish a Fund to speed up the development of Zongo communities into centers of opportunity.
In March 2019, the then Minister for Inner Cities and Zongo Development, Hon. Alhaji Boniface Abubakar Siddiq announced a seed capital of GH?219.5 Million to the Zongo Development Fund.
According to information available on the ministry’s official website, the Fund since its inception has been used to among other initiatives, build football complexes and pitches, embark on the Inner Cities Household Toilets Project, sharpen skills of Zongo Food Vendors on safety measures, introduce the Zongo Coders Programme and built the capacity of Zongo Youth for the labour market.
