Ahead of your visit to Damongo and by extension Nana Addo’s Savannah region, let me heartily welcome you. I am reaching out to you from my abode( Sangayiri) in Larabanga, where you reneged on your promise in 2008 to provide pipe-borne water should the NDC be voted to power and you become the vice president. If you can remember, that was where in April 2008, you told the people that their source of drinking water which was a dam and some boreholes provided by former president Kuffuor was not suitable for even animals and so you would provide pipe-borne water for should you become the vice president. The people have been drinking that same water for the eight years you were at the helm of affairs in this country, first as a vice president, a situational president,,, and the substantive president until Nana Addo, Bawumia, and Lawyer Abu Jinapor
I have heard you will be visiting the Jakpa Palace per your itinerary to present yourself as the flagbearer of the NDC for the 2024 elections to the Yagbonwura and the Gonja Traditional Council as the presidential candidate of the NDC. The last time you did this was in April 2008. Factually, for the two times you were made the flagbearer of the NDC when you were in power, that is in 2012 and 2016, you never in any grand style presented yourself to the Yagbonwura and the Gonja Traditional Council. ? I also heard that you shall attend the seven-day funeral rites of Busunuwurche. Wow! Is this not great? Someone who was conspicuously missing in almost every big event in Gonjaland be it the Yagbon Damba celebration or the annual Gonjaland Youth Association gathering though you were proudly invited as a son of the land? It is on record that from January 2009 to January 2017 when you were at the top echelon of Ghana’s leadership, the only year you graced the Yagbon Damba was in 2011 when Yagbonwura Tuntumba celebrated his first anniversary. Is it that it is only when you are in opposition that you deem it fit to come home? Or do you best fit the Gonja wise saying that ” it is when the leg of a goat is broken that it knows the way to its owner’s house”
For your information, the political trick you have always played on the minds of the people of Gonjaland to vote for you as a kinsman has quickly deteriorated. Your usual statement and message to us that you are our kinsman and hence we should vote for you no longer rings a bell in the ears of many. Except the dyed-in-wool members of the NDC who still carry you in high esteem, all Gonjalanders who mean well for the land are rooting for your contender, Dr. Bawumia. The way and manner you forsook the land and denied it of monumental development still anger a lot of us well- meaning Gonjalanders to the marrow. I hope you saw it culminate in the 2020 presidential and Parliamentary results in the Savannah region.
The reverence Nana Addo and Bawumia have given the people of Gonja coupled with the unprecedented development they pushed to the land has endeared them with the us. Dr. Bawumia before he even picked form to contest the NPP flagbearership submitted himself to the Yagbonwura and came back immediately to express his words of appreciation to him after he won the contest.
Should we vote against Bawumia after all this he did for us as a people just because you are our kinsman?
1) The creation of the Savannah region, something that you refused doing when you had the authority to do so because of your personal interest.
2) The creation of the North East Gonja district that increased the number of districts of Gonjaland to seven (The West Gonja and East Gonja districts created by the Colonial masters, Sawla- Tuna- Kalba and Central Gonja districts created by former president Kuffuor,North Gonja district created by the late former president Mills).
3) The construction of the Buipe and Sawla district hospitals that you cut sod for their construction without funding has been started and fully completed and put into good use.
4) The upgrading of the the West Gonja and East Gonja districts into municipalities.
5) The upgrading of the Bole district police command to a divisional police command.
6) The connection of the several communities to the national grid.
7) The construction of the Sanyeri bridge in your own hometown , Bole
8) The numerous job opportunities given to the youth of Gonja
9) The construction of the Daboya- Mankargu road
10) The construction of the Virgin Bunjai- Fufulso road
11) The four(4) Astro turfs in the region.
12) The construction of the Damongo and Salaga township roads.
13) The Yapei and Salaga water projects.
14) The numerous scholarships given to the youth of Gonjaland.
15) The numerous educational facilities and infrastructure.
16) The numerous health facilities including the North Gonja and North East Gonja district hospitals under the agenda 111 policy.
It’s me.
Iddi Adam Osman
Larabanga.
Article: An Epistle to Candidate John Dramani Mahama as he Visits Savannah Region on 24th February, 2024. By Iddi Adam Osman
