Northern intellectuals urged to champion development

Tamale, Dec. 05, GNA- Politicians and intellectuals from the North have been urged, "to find home grown solutions" to complement efforts of the government and development partners to address the development challenges facing the area.

Mrs. Mary Chinery-Hesse, Chief Adviser to the President, who made the call, said since independence, Northern politicians had placed more focus on politics, neglecting other development priorities such as poverty reduction, education and health.

"The North would continue to lag behind in development in spite of any intervention from the government and development partners, if intellectuals and politicians from the area do not harness the rich natural and human resources the area was endowed with for its development", she said.

Mrs. Chinery-Hesse was addressing a roundtable conference on the strategy for sustainable development of Northern Ghana in Tamale on Wednesday.

The National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) and the Institute of Policy Alternative (IPA) organised the forum in the wake of the floods that devastated the area and the establishment of the Northern Development Fund.

Members of Parliament, Ministers of State, including the Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Alhaji Abubakari Saddique Boniface and the Minister of Health, Major Courage Quashigah (rtd), development partners and the regional economic planning officers of the three Northern Regions, attended the forum.

The two-day conference would help draw up future strategies for the sustainable development of the North and determine how the government's long term development plan could be aligned with development partners perspectives for supporting Ghana in bridging the development gap between the South and the North. Mrs. Chinery-Hesse noted that the country's development partners had placed a lot of emphasis on the development of the North and therefore called on politicians from the area to use their talent to tap the resources for the development of the area. The President's Chief Adviser called for attitudinal change among the people of Northern Ghana, especially those in leadership positions adding that, they should develop programmes that would involve the active participation of the people and lead to the improvement in the quality of their lives.

On the establishment of the Northern Development Fund (NDF), Mrs. Chinery-Hesse reiterated that it was seed money meant for the development of Northern Ghana and not as was being speculated in some quarters.

Alhaji Mustapha Ali Idris, Northern Regional Minister, said Northern Ghana had not appreciated any meaningful development since independence and noted that it would take a long time for the area to catch up with the South. He said in view of the poverty situation in Northern Ghana there was a need for a concerted effort, the political will, commitment and the active participation of the people to narrow the development gap between the South and the North.

Alhaji Boniface on his part described the Conference as a wake-up call for Northerners to solve their own problems and said the North had been deprived in many areas particularly in the area of education, which was at the core of any development activity.