A group calling itself the Concerned New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Northern Region, is demanding the immediate dismissal of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (ASAD), Mr Charles Abugri.

The aggrieved group who trooped to the Modern City Hotel in Tamale on Wednesday morning, waited for several hours to see the Minister for President’s Special Development Initiatives, Mavis Hawa Koomson to present to her their grievances.

In a petition which was later given out, they issued two-week ultimatum within which their demands must be met or they will embark on violent protestation.

Members of the group, who literally held the minister hostage at her hotel room, claimed Mr Charles Abugri is not a credible person and is alleged to have given $9million dollars from the authority to his friend to trade in tricycles.

“As a result, we have resolved as NPP members that, we cannot work with him, since he has no integrity and therefore we don’t have enough confidence in him to run the affairs of the Northern Development Authority or any other office under the Akuffo Addo led NPP administration. We however wish to call on you the sector Minister, Hon Mavis Hawa Koomson to facilitate the implementation of the recommendations in the coming days in order to ensure that, the depreciation of the machines that are kept under the mercy of the sun and the harsh weather condition and downpour will be curtailed.”

The Minister who received their petition, promised to look into their grievances with consultation from the appropriate authorities.

Read full text of their release below:

CONCERN NPP YOUTH NETWORK

Hon Minister,

Special Development Initiatives

Accra-Ghana

PETITION TO MINISTER OF SPECIAL DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES

It is with great excitement and hope we write this petition to you, the sector Minister of Special Development Initiatives. This is among the series of Petitions and Press Releases, we the above mentioned group have written in the last couple of months.

As a Concern Group, we monitored keenly the operations and activities of SADA especially its subsidiary component, Unik Savannah and brought to the attention of the government the dubious arrangements that were carried out prior to and during the operations of the company.

For this and many reasons, an Adhoc Committee was setup by your Ministry to establish the real facts behind the establishment of the company. Though, the SADA C.E.O, Dr. Charles Abugri and some Directors of the authority never relented on their efforts to thwart the efforts of the committee, the Inter-Ministerial committee came out with its findings and advise as well as some recommendations.

Key among the recommendations includes;

The agreement between SADA and Unik Savannah should be terminated per their TOR and therefore, the staff of Unik Savannah should have no further role to play and should therefore be asked to step aside. The interim management should be dissolved SADA should be responsible for the contractual agreements with the new companies and SADA should use four weeks to come out with modalities of engaging the new companies for the distribution of the existing stock and collection of the debts. These are some of the recommendations of the committee which the Chief Executive Officer, Charles Abugri refused to adhere to.

We wish to reiterate that, the SADA Boss is not a credible person giving the fact that, he took $9million dollars from the Ghanaian taxpayer and gave to his friend, Dennis Anderson to trade in Tricycles and ultimately shared among his cronies and members of the erstwhile NDC government.

Again, we want to put on record that, Charles Abugri after the committee’s findings went to EOCO and requested for an Alternative Conflict Resolution between SADA and his friend Dennis Anderson (Former C.E.O of Unik Savannah). This we believe was an attempt by the SADA boss to defraud the people of Ghana by bringing his friend back to reclaim what do not belong to them.

As a result, we have resolved as NPP members that, we cannot work with him, since he has no integrity and therefore we don’t have enough confidence in him to run the affairs of the Northern Development Authority or any other office under the Akuffo Addo led NPP administration. We however wish to call on you the sector Minister, Hon Mavis Hawa Koomson to facilitate the implementation of the recommendations in the coming days in order to ensure that, the depreciation of the machines that are kept under the mercy of the sun and the harsh weather condition and downpour will be curtailed.

This appeal comes at the wake when we have realized that, there is a deliberate attempt by SADA to delay the implementation process. We want to state without any equivocation that, if the roadmap set by SADA is not realized in one week, we would advise ourselves accordingly the following week. We will resist any attempt by any government official to reinstate Dr. Charles Abugri under any capacity within SADA or NDA. We would not miss our words; we shall resist him with all the contempt it deserves.

Thank You

Copied to:

Northern Regional Minister

Mr. Salifu Saeed.

All Media House in Ghana