Frankly Speaking: SADA saddens me
After my first visits to Wa, Bolgatanga, and Tamale, I developed a very special emotional attachment to the north. During those visits, I saw children assuming to be in a school classroom while they had assembled under a tree with a makeshift blackboard. Close to their ‘classroom’ was a heap of rubbish with different sizes of cattle, sheep and goats gracing.
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I also saw my fellow human beings sharing water with animals, with all the health hazards including the many water-borne diseases which there were likely to contract. But they had no choice, and probably were grateful to God that they had that water no matter how dirty, infected, and unhygienic it was.
The other reason for my personal attachment to the north is the fact that most of my best friends and professional colleagues are northerners and Ewes.
Imagine that each time I visited Wa, one of my very senior journalist colleagues, Chris Alalbila, who was then the Regional Manager of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), would treat me like his very big boss or an extraordinary important person. The sad thing is whenever Chris came to Accra, he would not even disclose his whereabouts to enable me ‘retaliate’ (as Iddi Amin would say instead of reciprocate) his kind gesture.
And think about Ibrahim Awal, who later became the Managing Director of the Graphic Communications Group Limited, while he was the regional correspondent in Wa, would buy bags of cow feet and yams and send them all the way to Accra not for any big person but for my humble self.
Colleagues such as Elvis Adinyina of the Information Services Department, Matthew Ayinne Ayoo of Ghanaian Times and many others too numerous to list here, always treated me with extraordinary importance each time I visited the three northern regions, yet never would they make me do the same to them when they visited Accra.
Wedding day
On my wedding day, I invited almost all my friends and colleagues. Though I had left GCGL for more than two years, my colleagues there virtually hijacked the church just as my wife’s colleague nurses did. I invited some ministers of state who were my friends, while some told me after the wedding that they forgot about my invitation. John Dramani Mahama arrived very early and sat through the church service and the reception, and was among the last to leave. Such is the kind of friendship I have with people of the north. I will talk about my Ewe link at another time (but please don’t start speculating anything).
It was from this position that I have always fought against people who had insisted that the free education enjoyed by northerners be scrapped. From what I have witnessed in the north, I have no pain in my heart that I could not go to secondary school because of my parents inability to have the needed funds, while people of my age group had free education and continued to go to university and later became big people in the country while I was still doing my education by instalment through my own sweat.
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Naked robbery
It is, therefore, an understatement if I say I’m saddened by the SADA (Savannah Accelerated Development Authority) saga, more so when I realise that most of the people involved in this naked robbery of the life of the good people of the north are indeed northerners. I premise all my discussion on the Auditor-General’s report on SADA, which as at now has not been challenged or withdrawn by the report’s writer.
The former SADA Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Alhaji Gilbert Idi, if my memory serves me right, was a product of Rawlings’ revolutionary PNDC, and served as a regional secretary (minister). He was among the probity and accountability choristers who sang that Rawlings hymn for over 11 good years. The least I expected of somebody like that was to have supervised this high-level corruption at SADA.
For instance, according to the Auditor-General’s report, Gilbert Idi, and his management on December 24, 2012, advanced one million US dollars ($1,000,000) to one company, Human Construction Engineering Group Corporation, but failed to recover the amount from the company. This means that the money was simply given out as a dash – free Christmas gift when Idi’s own family members were still sharing the same pond with cattle and sheep.
Again, SADA management gave out GH¢69,840 to Kasmed Seed Company to organise a business trip to Birmingham, UK and Berlin, Germany without any approval from the SADA board. In addition to that, GH¢620,206 was given to four consultants for services which SADA’s own staff had the competence to provide. Strangely, 714 bags of hybrid seeds worth GH¢321,300 were procured by SADA but were left to go to waste because SADA supplied these seeds to two service providers long after the planting season.
While millions of the people in the SADA programme area were hungry, jobless, lacked potable water, lacked electricity and were living in abject poverty, Gilbert Idi as CEO of SADA gave out US$20,000 to three of his officers to attend the UN General Assembly in New York but failed to account for their hotel accommodation and other expenses at US$13,938. Unbelievable!
Delayed justice
Another saddening aspect of this SADA saga is the part which has allegedly been played by Roland Agambire, a citizen of Sirigu in the Upper East Region. His company, Asongtaba Guinea Fowl Growers Project, was given GH¢15million SADA money for a guinea fowl project which did not produce any guinea fowl, while his other company, Asongtaba Cottage Industry, which also received GH¢35million for an afforestation programme cannot show the supposed planted trees.
Strangely, while I’m sure there are children in his native Sirigu and the rest of the Upper East Region not in school, Agambire’s AGAAMS group of companies brought into the country Chris Brown, a US pop and R&B singer, and reportedly paid the singer a whopping $1million as appearance fee. Did Agambire think about his people in the north when the money was given to this singer?
President Mahama has initiated moves to rectify things with the SADA project, but I’m still saddened by the slow pace at which those who have defrauded the nation, and particularly mortgaged the lives of the people of the north, are being dealt with. Justice delayed, we are told, is justice denied. The people of the north deserve justice, and quickly too.
PS: Mr Inspector-General of Police, having openly accepted that the Police Service had done some wrong in recent past, would you please respond to the children and widow of Adjei Akpor, the 22-year-old man your men killed at Adenta on January 6, 2014 and give them justice? This is the 16th week since the man was killed.
The author is a Journalist and Political Scientist. He is the Head of the Department of Media and Communication Studies, Pentecost University College, Accra. - fasado@hotmail.com