Mahama Fails To Stop Tamale Demo Today

Coalition of opposition parties in the Northern Region have resisted all attempts by the ruling party to stop their historic demonstration scheduled to take place today, Monday, August 22, 2016.

The latest is an unscheduled trip by the President to the area today, hurriedly planned in the hope of offering the Police an excuse to get the street protest cancelled or postponed for security reasons.

Addressing the media in Tamale yesterday, Mohammed Abdul Kudu, the spokesperson for the coalition, disclosed that all manner of pressure, including financial inducements, had been offered to the organisers, particularly the regional leadership of the smaller parties, hoping to get them to pull out and break the coalition. But, the leadership has turned it all down.

Next was to use the Northern Regional Police Command to stop the demonstration, dubbed “Dimiiya”, meaning “Times are tough”, from happening. That has also not worked.

The President was in Tamale Friday to commission the renewal of direct international flights from Tamale to Mecca since 1979.

Our sources say during his trip, the President and his strategists held a meeting with the Northern Regional Security Council trying to impress upon them to do whatever it would take to stop the demonstration from coming on.

But, the organisers, who gave notice to the Police as way back as August 10, twelve days ago, are saying they would not stop their protest for the President to come and have his campaign.

“If demonstrations can take place in Accra when the President is at the Flagstaff House then we see no reason why a demo cannot take place in Tamale when the President is supposedly going to be in the Region.

“We are even lucky that the President will be in the Region and nearby in Gushegu when we hit the streets of the regional capital,” Abdul Kudu told the Daily Statesman.

“It means the vibration from the nager, hunger and frustrations from the people of Tamale will be within his hearing distance. We have seen over the years that the Flagstaff House has been too far away for the President to feel our pains and sufferings. So we are happy and lucky to know he is going to be close by.”

To the organisers, the President being in the Region is the more reason why “every person here in the North who is struggling as a result of the bad leadership and decisions of the President should see Monday’s protest as an opportunity to register their displeasure.”

The organisers say they have managed to do some changes to help make things easier for the Police.

They have reduced the period of the street protest to three hours, starting from 8am. They will now avoid the route to the airport to help those making the Hajj to get to the Tamale Airport without any undue traffic hindrance.

Tens of thousands of people from constituencies up and down the vast Region are expected to show up. The protest is to send a clear message to the President that his actions and inactions, especially over the last 4 years have rather contributed to worsening the living conditions of the people of the North.

Four years of dumsor, unreliable power supply and counting, followed by astronomical increases in electricity prices since last December, has impoverished the people further.

Jobs have been lost, businesses have collapsed, and families simply cannot make ends meet as many are using the bulk of their income just to pay electricity bills.

The coalition of opposition parties held a joint press conference to give the president a one week ultimatum to reduce electricity prices by at least 50% or “face the full force of their wrath.”

This, they say, was ignored and that Government did not even see it as necessary to meet with them to discuss their concerns.

“The President and his government have completely refused to respond to our request. We even relaxed our demands, and waited 48 days and 48 nights and not even an invitation to meet the Regional political heads to sit down and discuss these matters that affect every household and business in the Northern Region, like access to reliable and affordable electricity… To ignore our collective voice, is to ignore the voice of the people; and to ignore that is to show absolute disdain and intolerance for the opposition political parties here,” the coalition stated in their press conference held on Tuesday, August 16, to announce the date for the demonstration.

Explaining further the reasons behind their peaceful demonstration, the Regional Secretary of the New Patriotic Party, Sule Salifu, said the protestors “are determined to show to the whole world that President Mahama and his government cannot continue to take us for granted and treat the people of the North as if we are only good for votes. For every three people who may agree with the President, we can count on at least 7 more who are sick and tired of the lies, deception, unemployment, rising cost of living, lack of irrigation, bad roads, and the institutionalised version of stealing from the coffers of the state.”

The spokesperson for the coalition yesterday added, “We are leaders representing the various political parties here. Local issues are our concerns and when we speak out on behalf of the people we expect the Government to take us seriously.”

Today’s demonstration has been the talk of the Tamale metropolis for the past week. Hairdressers, tailors, barbers, welders and other small scale industry players have all expressed their zeal to participate. They see the issues as their issues.

Northern Regional Secretary of Hassan Ayariga’s ACP, Seidu Napodoo, in a Citi News interview, expressed his happiness with the organization.

He said, “We have informed all constituencies and all the constituencies will be represented and we have been sensitizing people on the routes that we are going to use and it is going to be a peaceful demonstration just to alert the government on things that are affecting us within the region.”

He added, “So APC is well poised and all the constituencies will converge at the starting point on Monday.”

The CPP’s regional Secretary, Nuhu Jingli, added that his party had called on its supporters across the region to come to the regional capital to join the demonstration. “The main reason why we are going to demonstrate is about the tariff hikes and we are coming out with about five buses across the Region,” he said.

“It is high time people got to understand that this government is insensitive to its own people and so we are therefore going to demonstrate to send a signal to the whole world at large that NDC is a party that can be described as a calamity that has befallen this country,” the CPP regional chief scribe stressed.

“So we must therefore say no to NDC’s hardheartedness about the people of the Northern Region to be precise,” Nuhu Jingli underlined.

Meanwhile, Public Relations Officer of the Northern Regional police command, ASP Ebenezer Tetteh, earlier told Citi FM’s Abdul Karim Naatogmah that the Police and the organizers had agreed on the routes to use.

The coalition comprises the New Patriotic Party, the Convention Peoples Party, the Peoples National Convention, the Progressive Peoples Party, the National Democratic Party and Hassan Ayariga’s All Peoples Congress.