Last week ex-president Rawllings was in the Northern region for several reasons. He visited the Central Gonja District were flood caused lots of havoc and continued to Tamale. In Tamale he visited the family of the late Alhaji Sumani Zakari the immediate regional chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) who died recently.
Chairman Rawlings did pay visits on other opinion leaders in the region and spoke extensively about the need for there to be justice for persons who allegedly suffered injustices during the administration of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). He went ahead to give a long ‘lecture’ about what the absence of justice can do to the people.
When I read those news items, I started laughing with deep pain in my heart. This is a man in whose term as president of Ghana, Koranteng Addow a high court judge among others; who was breastfeeding her baby was abducted in the middle of the night killed and burnt and up to date her family is yet to receive any iota of justice!
In his time as president of Ghana, former presidents of the country were dragged to Teshie and killed like dogs. Their families are yet to receive any justice. In his time as president, several Ghanaians vanished into thin air and are yet to be located anywhere on this earth. Yet this is the same man who has no shame talking about the very justice he failed to give to others!
The list of human right abuses and injustices that took place in Ghana under his presidency are so much so that it will only take eternity to recall all here, so am not going to waste much time on things everybody already knows.
My beef with the ex-president is his deafening hypocrisy about having the welfare of the people of the North at heart anytime he visits the place. It is so deeply irritating how he is always allowed to go about with such local populism anytime he visits the place. He must be told not to make the North his populism headquarters!
If he has the welfare of the people of the North at heart, why didn’t he talk about the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) when he visited the place? Before elections in 2008, the political party he founded promised a certain amount of seed money for the fund and when the people of the North voted massively to bring the NDC to power, the seed money was reduced! What is more unjust about this? Why didn’t he tell his party to give the people of the North justice in terms of the SADA seed money?
Why didn’t he question the rationale behind the reduction of the seed money for the SADA? Is it not so insulting that, the ex-president chooses and picks what he thinks constitutes justice? Yes he could still have spoken about his pet topics; Ya Na and Issah Mobilla and still also add the injustice being done to the people of the North in relationship to the SADA fund.
Look at further hypocrisy of chairman Rawllings: even though the SADA bill was passed some months ago, the Mills’ government is even yet to release the funds for the programme to take off. Why didn’t chairman Rawllings call on president Mills of his NDC party to do justice to the people of the North by releasing the funds?
It is also a huge shame that, Members of Parliament from the North have become deaf and dumb over the SADA issue. Why are they not talking about it in parliament? Why did they not petition the president when the seed money was reduced? Why are they quite even though the SADA bill was passed by parliament and the money still not released? Just why are they quite over this issue? Why can’t they either hold a joint press conference to call on the government to release the money or even boycott parliamentary proceeding in protest?
Why are they always quick to talk about Ya Na and not ready to talk about ‘Ya SADA’? No wonder some of them had the worst grading ever by the African Watch magazine the other time.
I did like to use this last paragraph to call on my brothers and sisters up North to desist and resist some of these political war-mongers who see the North as the best place for their war mongering, infantile and hate talks. Let us shame these false prophets of justice!
Akilu Sayibu UK
E-mail:Akilu.sayibu@live.uwe.ac.uk