RE: NDC Blew SADA’S $100m With No Project To Show In 8 Years—Bawumia

It is gradually becoming difficult for the Vice President, Dr Mahmoud Bawumia to hear the voices of reason from his backdoor. Am I to believe that his aides are not monitoring the feedback from the system anytime he speaks and attacks Former President Mahama? Well, they think those feedbacks and threats from Ghanaians mean nothing once they can rig the impending election. Without the name Mahama, Bawunia will lose political relevance...so they say.

I read from online portals about Dr Bawunia’s commentary on Asempa FM and subsequently had the opportunity to listen to excerpts of the said interview. I wasn’t surprised though, but I got worried as a political activist. Are the frontline politicians leaving any principles and standards for the upcoming ones? Dr Bawumia talking about SADA/NDA? Wow!

I took particular interest in his comment about SADA. According to him, the NDC sunk about $100m into SADA and the only outcome was the guinea fowls project. Someone needs to remind Dr Bawumia that we are in the last quarter of 2020, so, the people of the North want to hear the success story of the rebranded SADA into Northern Development Authority (NDA). The story he’s now telling us was the same story he told us same time four years ago.

If anybody heard anything about the rebranded Northern Development Authority (NDA), then, it was the unfortunate story of the 400 and 700 missing tricycles and motorbikes respectively. As widely reported by the media,Ten forty-foot containers filled with 40 tricycles each went missing in October 27, 2019 which simultaneously triggered shock and police investigation.

Shockingly and expectedly, the then acting CEO, Dr Abdel-Majeed Haroun who reported the matter to the Police for further investigation mysteriously got fired by President Akuffo-Addo on the 12th of December, 2019, the same day the CID acknowledged his case. At the same time, the Deputy CEO, Hajia Lariba Abudu, Mr Samba, Dr Bawumia’s right hand man, who were to be investigated were rather shielded.

Not even when the Kandahar boys own up that they were tasked to forcibly move the said tricycles and motorbikes from the NDA yard could get a single one of them arrested. Is Dr Bawunia proud of this development? His own sister, Hajia Lariba Abudu, who is also the Deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Northern Development Authority (NDA), allegedly has knowledge of the missing tricycles.

Ironically, the very SADA Dr Bawumia claimed didn’t achieve anything was the very institution that procured these tricycles and motorbikes in late 2015. Today in Northern Ghana and more especially in the Tamale Metropolis, any tricycle you see has a SADA logo embossed. The tricycle business is one that has singularly added more to the local economy than any direct government initiative.

In addition, the tree planting project although faced some challenges just like any government policy, a research conducted and a report submitted by UDS in the wake of the SADA brouhaha has it that about 85% of the trees planted survived. However, the issues were about poor policy coordination and consultation and not that some particular wrongdoing was occasioned with the tree planting program.

Shamefully, Vice President Bawunia still makes reference to that scam of 1 village 1 dam as the achievement of the NPP in Northern Ghana. Without blinking, Dr Bawunia claimed that his government had constructed 435 dams across Northern Ghana. As if God got angry with this claim...only some few hours later after the interview, some villages in his own backyard got submerged by water from one of the poorly constructed dugouts. We sympathize with the victims of this unfortunate incident.

In July 2020, the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana with funding from OXFAM commissioned a research to examine the implementation of the ‘One Village, One Dam’ initiative in the Upper East Region. The report from this research revealed that about 90% of the dams (dugouts) were not fit for irrigation purposes. Is Dr Bawunia reading from a different hymn book or his handlers are just not up to date with issues from the ground?

Can Dr Bawunia point to one single policy or program that his rebranded NDA has designed and implemented that stand the slightest chance of impacting the lives of his Northern Brethren? Is Dr Bawumia sure he’s seen the so called dams he’s referred to and matched same to what was promised in his 2016 manifesto?