Buipe, Central Gonja – The Organizer of the Ruling National Democratic Congress in New York City, United States of America (USA), Mr. Fatawu Musah has donated food items worth about seven hundred United States Dollars to the victims of the recent floods at Buipe in the Cenral Gonja District of the Northern Region. The items, made up of cereals, were presented to the victims at their camp at Buipe at a short ceremony witness by District NADMO Representatives, the NDC local Chairman for Buipe, Mr. Abubakari Toti and other officials of the Central Gonja District Assembly.

Making the presentation on behalf of Mr. Fatawu Musah, his cousin, Yahaya Musah, explained that Mr. Musah, who is also a native of Buipe, had been horrified by the pictures of the devastation caused by the floods, which he saw on the facebook page of another cousin, Mohammed Gausu; and immediately decided to act. The donation was his way of expressing solidarity with the victims in their time of serious difficulty. He used the occasion to call on other well-wishers, especially, natives of the central Gonja District to come to the aid of the victims.

A victim of the floods, Mr. Adam Bakari who lost his house to the floods expressed appreciation for the relief items and called on other benevolent members of society to help the victims. He disabused the minds of Ghanaians that the floods had affected only people living too close to the river bed, saying; “my own house is more than two kilometres from the river bed, yet I have lost it and I am now a refugee in my hometown”.

It would be recalled that, in November of 2010, the people of the Central Gonja District witnessed their worst floods in living memory, when both the white and the Black Volta Rivers, which find their course to the Akosombo dam through the district, overflowed their banks and caused considerable damage to property in the district. Over 8,000 people were displaced in Buipe. Many of the affected persons have taken up residence with relatives in neighbouring villages. The majority are however living in camps provided by the Central Gonja District Assembly and the National Disaster Management Organization, (NADMO). Meanwhile, the level of the water in the river is still very high, in spite of the opening of the spillways of the Akosombo dam to spill a considerable quantity of water from the reservoir.