body-container-line-1

The Sunshine Region (Navrongo-Bolgatanga Diocese in perspective)

By Damian Avevor, Robert Mawunyegah and Mary Antwiwaa Obeng
Special Report The Sunshine Region Navrongo-Bolgatanga Diocese in perspective
NOV 26, 2015 LISTEN

The Catholic Church in the Navrongo-Bolgatanga Diocese in the Upper East Region also known as the Sunshine Region, was blessed to play host to the members of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference during its 2015 Plenary Assembly at Bolgatanga from November 6 to 14, 2015 on the theme: The Laity in the Context of the New Evangelisation.

Though dry and sunny, the people of Bolgatanga tumultuously welcomed all the Bishops on Friday, November 6 as they arrived to the TAP Hotel, their lodging place.

Checks indicate that the last Plenary Assembly of the GCBC took place nearly 20 years ago under the auspices of the late Most Rev. Lucas Abadamloora. The current Bishop of the Diocese, Most Rev. Alfred Agyenta, was delighted to have the privilege of playing host to the GCBC and deemed this event as a moment of grace for both the region and the local Church.

Courtesy call by Bishops
The 22 Bishops including two retired(Emeritus) upon arriving in Bolgatanga and as custom demands, paid a courtesy call on Mr. James Zuugah Tiigah, Upper East Regional Minister at his residence as part of their 10-day Plenary Assembly.

The GCBC was led by its President, Most Rev. Joseph Osei-Bonsu and Most Rev. Alfred Agyenta, Bishop of Navrongo-Bolgatanga. Bishop Osei-Bonsu briefed the Regional Minister about the Plenary Assembly, assuring him of the GCBC’s continuous prayer to enable the Government construct more Solar Power Plants to solve the energy crisis in the country.

mq2tkxwkjeimage002

The Bishops with the Regional Minister

Bishop Osei-Bonsu also presented a copy of a Book- Ghana Bishops Speak- A collection of Communiques, Memoranda and Pastoral Letters of the GCBC.

Interacting with the Bishops, the Regional Minister commended them for their contribution to national development in the areas of education, health, peace building and Social services.

He praised the Bishops for their help to the people of the Region, saying that the Church and the State had for a long time been partners in development since its inception, appealing to the Church to continue to support the Government in the promotion of education and health and to pray for peace.

txob61dqq4image004

Bishop Osei-Bonsu presenting Bishops Speak to the Upper East Regional Minister

He expressed the optimism that the event would offer the participants the opportunity to pray for the realization of the spiritual and material wellbeing of the people of the Upper East Region. He urged the Bishops to discuss the issue of materialism and proliferation of Churches in the country, lamenting that these mushroom Churches only preached prosperity and wealth.

He encouraged the Bishops to stick to the principles for which the Church was established by Christ himself, saying that the Catholic Church had a well organised hierarchical structure that needs not to be abandoned.

Describing the Upper East as a Sunshine Region, Mr. Tiigah appealed to the Bishops to consider initiating the growing and planting of trees in the Region as a way of protecting the ecology. He presented a Smock each to the Bishops in appreciation of their visit and good works to compliment the efforts of the State.

Present at the meeting were Mr. Daniel A. Syme, Deputy Upper East Regional Minister; Alhaji Abdulai Abubakar, Upper East Regional Co-coordinating Director and Abass Ketigwie Beacher, Bolgatanga Municipal Co-coordinating Director.

Visit to Solar Panel
The Bishops also visited the Power Solar Plant Panel at Pungu, near Navrongo to familiarise themselves with its operation and were briefed by Mr. Daniel Doe and Mr. Dramani Rashid, Officers in charge at the time of the visit.

m62tkx7jjeimage006

A section of the Bishops being briefed by Mr. Doe

According to Mr. Doe, the panel was constructed in 2013 which currently produces 2.5 megawatts added to the national grade, saying that the initiative was to harness the sun energy to help ease the power crisis in the country. The Bishops were taken through the process at the plant and they prayed that Ghana would have sufficient power to its citizenry.

bfv2ymk88simage008

The Panel
Most Rev. Alfred Agyenta, the Bishop of Navrongo-Bolgatanga Diocese earlier presided over an opening Mass at the Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Basilica at Navrongo.

Bishop Agyenta explained that the celebration of Mass at the Minor Basilica was a pilgrimage to the place where the Church began in the North and to ask for the intercession of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows for a successful Plenary.

In his homily, he dilated on the theme of the Plenary Assembly, The Laity in the Context of New Evangelisation, saying that the laity had a crucial role of proclaiming and promoting the Kingdom values in their lives and in society.

He urged the faithful to make clear and unambiguous choices for the Kingdom of the Lord, lamenting that people hardly practiced the values of service, detachment from wealth and self-sacrifice.

After the Mass, the Bishops, led by Bishop Osei-Bonsu prayed at the tomb of Most Rev. Rudolph Akanlu, the first Ghanaian Bishop of Navrongo-Bolgatanga Diocese who died in 2001.

During the Plenary Assembly, each of the Bishops went to selected Churches to preside over the Eucharist and interact with the Parishioners.

The faithful turned out in their hundreds, usually meeting the Bishops some way from the Church and escorting them with singing and dancing to the Church for the Mass.

The faithful expressed their appreciation for the Episcopal visits to the Parishes, presenting the Bishops with various gifts.

At the Sacred Heart Cathedral at Bolgatanga, Most Rev. Anthony Adanuty, Vice President of the GCBC and Bishop of Keta-Akatsi, urged the faithful to always be generous in all their endeavours.

Current Ecclesiastical Data of Navrongo-Bolgatanga Diocese

What is now known as the Diocese of Navrongo-Bolgatanga and which eventually gave birth to the Tamale Ecclesiastical Province, was founded about 109 years ago by the Society of the Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers), who opened their first mission post in Navrongo in 1906, having entered the then Gold Coast from upper Volta (now Burkina Faso).

In 1926, the mission became an Apostolic Prefecture and was later raised to the status of an Apostolic Vicariate in 1934. In 1956, the Diocese of Navrongo was erected and remained so until 1977 when it was rechristened, Diocese of Navrongo-Bolgatanga, following the transfer of the Episcopal See from Navrongo to Bolgatanga, the Regional Capital of the then upper Region.

The Diocese of Navrongo-Bolgatanga currently has a population of 135,474 Catholics distributed among 18 Parishes and one Quasi Parish. Most of these Parishes are located in rural areas where the work of primary evangelisation is still very crucial. Catholics live side by side with an appreciable number of adherents of African Traditional religion, Islam and members of other Christian denominations, mostly Protestants and Charismatic/Pentecostal groups.

The Diocese has a presbyterium strength of 73 Priests, 12 of whom were members of three Clerical Missionary Congregations; six Diocesan Priests currently on study mission, three serving as Fidei Donum Priests in the US and two on sabbatical. There are currently seven Religious Congregations of Men and Women Religious working in the diocese with total membership of 43 men and women.

Working closely with the Pastors at the very grassroots in the area of Catechetical and faith formation are mostly voluntary Catechists, also known as prayer leaders who number about 200. There are very few full time Catechists who also serve in the Parishes.

Geographical, Socio-economic situation
Territory wise, the Diocese has a land mass of 31,068 square km, comprising of the entire Upper East Region and parts of Northern Region. The total under the jurisdiction stands at population of two million according the latest census and is marked by a rich ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity. While this rich variety is certainly an asset to the diocese, as it reflects the universality of the Kingdom of God, the challenges to social cohesion, collaboration and effective pastoral care delivery are sometimes very daunting.

According to the Bishop of the Diocese in a presentation during the Bishops’ Conference, falling generally within the Savannah zone, the Region enjoys only a single major cropping season running from May to October. The long dry spell running from October to April often witnesses an annual migration of able bodied young men and women/girls to the Southern part of Ghana in search of temporal employment or simply to kill the time rather than sitting idle at home.

Most of these people undertake this trip in the hope of coming back home when rains return. Unfortunately, as it often happens, some of them never return at all while some of them end up their falling in love with the city or finding better opportunities of livelihood comparable to what they have left behind.

What is worrying is that sometimes some of these seasonal migrants include school boys and girls who never make it back to the classroom when schools reopen especially those involved in head porting (kayayei). This situation dose not only call for more to be done on the part of the political authorities of the region to address the root cause of the migration, namely the lack of better opportunities at home, but also poses a challenge to the pastoral care delivery of our local Church.

With these effects of the diocese and the Region, there is the need to find ways and means of providing appropriate pastoral responses to this seasonal phenomenon of human mobility.

The precarious climatic conditions mentioned earlier have a serious knock on effect on the general welfare of the population of this part of the country and a fortiori on the population of the Diocese of Navrongo-Bolgatanga. The heavy dependence on rain-fed agriculture in the Region makes it quite vulnerable. In fact according to the 2010 Population and Housing Census, 87.3 per cent of the population in the Upper East region live below the poverty line.

Needless to say such precarious socio-economic situation has serious effects on food security, literacy levels and access to health care in the Region. The single cropping season coupled with the long dry spell often bring along in its train food shortages. While the poverty levels of most families make it difficult for children to be enrolled and retained in School, the perennial food shortage poses serious threats to the health profile of the Region contributing to as it does to malnutrition and the prevalence of preventable diseases.

In the light of all these challenges facing the Sunshine Region, which is home to majority of the population of Northern Ghana, the need for government and most especially political authorities of the Region to show more resolve in seeing through the necessary interventions put in place to bridge the gap between the North and South cannot be over-emphasised.

Tourist Sites (PIKWORO SLAVE CAMP/PAGA CROCODILE

In spite of all these challenges, the Region has tourist sites to boost tourism. As part of the tour by the Catholic Press team covering the Bishops Conference led by Rev. Fr. Jonas Atara, a Communications Specialist of the Navrongo-Bolgatanga Diocese, we visited the PIKWORO Slave Camp at Nania, near Paga which has interesting history of how slaves were bought and sold in the 19th century.

The Pikworo area was used as a slave camp in the mid-19th century. The slave camp held close to 200 slaves at every point in time. Most of these slaves were captured from regions that now form the Ghana- Burkina Faso border.

nsj7myx43gimage010

The Catholic Press at Pikworo Slave Camp

At the Pikworo slave camp, visitors can see the places where the captives were fed and looked after. It is believed that the slaves were well taken care of so that they would fetch higher prices from the buyers.

Bowls in arranged rows in the rocks can be seen today as evidence of the treatment given to these slaves. There is also a cemetery where slaves who gave up their ghosts were buried.

The Pikworo slave camp is located 2km west of Paga, along a dirt road which is sign-posted right from the main road. Entrance to the slave camp is GH¢5 which comes with an informative guided tour by well-informed officials. It was indeed a sobering experience.

Crocodile Pond at Paga is well noted for the friendly nature of the crocodiles in the pond is located at Paga in the Upper East Region of Ghana , forty-four kilometres from Bolgatanga , the regional capital.

nsj7myx43gimage012

Welcome to Paga crocodile pond
The crocodiles at Paga are very friendly. Visitors can sit, touch and take photographs with these live crocodiles. The crocodiles roam freely throughout the ponds and it is unthinkable that anyone should harm them or they harm anyone.

The Paga crocodile pond has demonstrated buoyancy and flexibility in the protracted history of the mutual co-existence between the indigenes of Paga and their friendly crocodiles.

bfv3aml88simage014

A body of myth and totemic relationships span the elongated past of the residence of Paga and crocodiles. With a great deal of zeal, the leaders in the Paga community would be ever ready to narrate to you the story of the rescue of their ancestors by the crocodiles during their historical difficult days.

Legend has it that long ago a hunter was trapped between a pond and a pursuing lion. He made a bargain with a crocodile in the pond that he and his decedents would never eat crocodiles if the crocodile helped him cross the pond and escape from the lion.

The crocodile agreed helped the hunter cross the pond. The hunter established his house and later a village. An alternate story has it that the founder of Paga, Nave by name, actually came from Leo in Burkina Faso

The Church’s Social intervention
The diocese of Navrongo-Bolgatanga through its social interventions, had tried to enhance and complement its pastoral care delivery with programmes for the promotion of human development in the Region.

As a local Church that incarnates the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the men and women of the Region and beyond, the diocese cannot and has not remained indifferent to the situation of the people that all are called to serve.

To deal with food security issues and climate change, the Department of Livelihood and Advocacy programme (DILAP) with the support of local and international partners, has been able to roll out a number of interventions in several communities of the region. These include among others, reforestation of degraded lands, introduction of innovative techniques of farms and the provision of dug out wells.

The Catholic Education Unit works at tackling illiteracy through the promotion of access to quality education and the improvement of teaching and learning in Unit Schools. With seven health Facilities of various grades located mostly in the rural areas in the region, the Navrongo-Bolgatanga Diocese is involved in the promotion of primary healthcare and the provision of access to quality healthcare especially in the deprived areas.

As a Region, which in the past has been marred by social tensions and incidents of violence, the Department of Good Governance, Justice and Peace has made some modest contribution to the region and beyond in the area of Conflict Transformation and Peace Building.

In all these areas of social intervention and indeed in the deployment of its pastoral programmes, the Diocese enjoys a lot of good will and partnership from various categories of people and groups in the Region.

A 14-hour journey in public transport to the capital of the Sunshine Region (Upper East), Bolgatanga, is a real adventure for all to experience.

body-container-line