THE EXECUTIVE Director of the Tamale Community Development and Youth Advisory Centre (CODEYAC), Dr. Al-Hussen Zakaria, has protested against the spending of billions of cedis on peace-keeping duties in the north by the government, because it is unproductive and a senseless venture.
According to him, “the unproductive and senseless security cost would continue to undermine our development efforts, unless the general attitude and perception of development partners and relevant stakeholders change.”
To him, had these monies been invested in schools and health facilities among others, there would have been great development in the North, but “instead these limited resources are being invested in security persons who are abusing citizens daily.”
He added that development initiatives in Northern Ghana were done without regard to peace building and general conflict issues, which are an important part of development planning, stressing, “The Government of Ghana, and civil societies involved in conflict issues in the north, have over the years approached peace programmes in an ad-hoc manner.”
Dr. Zakaria, who was speaking on the topic, “Conflict Prevention, Resolution and Transformation: The Role of the Northern Woman” in the Northern Region last week, noted that conflict in Northern Ghana had severely undermined efforts towards good governance and poverty alleviation, adding that the intermittent outbreak of conflicts had resulted in heavy loss of life, property, political instability, mass displacement of people and delays in development initiatives.
Much as Dr. Zakaria is entitled to his views, we find his position that the use of security personnel to maintain peace in north is an unproductive and useless exercise, as a very unfortunate comment.
We agree with him that these billions of cedis being spent on peace-keeping officers in the north could have built schools and clinics for the people, but that is not enough justification to condemn the expenditure.
If the people have the modern schools, clinics, water and other facilities, and yet, do not have peace, how can they use them?
The Chronicle does not think that any government in this global world would buy such a theory, that money that should go into peace-keeping should be chanelled into development projects, when the people who are to benefit from this are themselves fighting, and therefore do not have peace.
Despite the huge sums of money being spent on security personnel to maintain law and order in the north, neither the Rawlings, Kufuor, nor Atta Mills' governments abandoned the development of the area.
The Chronicle thinks that Dr. Zakaria, as a proud son of the north, should rather direct his energy towards the education of his people to give peace a chance, instead of protesting against billions of cedis being spent on peacekeepers in the area.
As we noted earlier, it would be very risky for any government to withdraw the security personnel on the ground, and use the allowances spent on them to develop the area.
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