 Vice
President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur has urged politicians to campaign on
issues and ideas and stop threatening and intimidating their opponents.
He
said the Government was committed to ensuring peace, transparent, free
and fair elections, therefore, every citizen should support and
cooperate towards achieving that goal.
Vice President
Amissah-Arthur made the call when he attended the 40th Anniversary
Celebration of the Gonjaland Youth Association at Salaga, in the
Northern Region, at the weekend.
The Association converges once every year to fraternise and initiate development for the Gonja area.
The theme for the celebration is: “Forty
years of promoting peaceful co-existence for sustainable development of
Gonjaland; the role of the Gonjaland Youth Association”.
He asked
the traditional rulers in the Gonjaland to restore the reputation that
the Gonja people had by having peaceful enskinement regimes to remain
models for other areas to emulate.
He charged the traditional
authorities in the area to amicably resolve all the recent
misunderstandings in respect of ascensions to the various skins in
Gonjaland, saying that they had a rich history to protect and a standard
to maintain.
Vice President Amissah-Arthur stated that the
elimination of the misunderstandings and conflict would provide the
atmosphere for sustained progress and development. He said the theme for
the celebration imposed on them the need to promote peace and unity as
the surest guarantee to development.
“We must live up to this
theme and ensure that the land remains peaceful and unified for the
development that needs to take place,” he stated.
Vice President
Amissah-Arthur also urged the people to maintain the rich history of the
Gonja people, which had highlighted unity, courage, the protection of
what is right and to seek the best interest of the people.
He
said those attributes constituted a great heritage that should guide the
Association and everybody in Gonjaland in whatever position or business
they were engaged in.
He said the qualities constituted the building blocks for the future generation.
Vice
President Amissah-Arthur said the Association should harness resources
to market for tourism and cultural potentials of the area.
He
urged leadership of the Association to work closely with State
institutions with the requisite expertise as well as the local
authorities towards exploiting the tourism potential of Gonjaland.
The
Yagbon-Wura ,Tumtumba Bore Essa II, the Overland of Gonjaland, who was
represented by the Wasepe Wura, in a speech read by Abdullah Abubakar, a
registrar at the Traditional Council, urged the people to come together
to support the activities of the Association to achieve its intended
objectives.
He emphasised the need for the Association to concentrate on its core mandate of conflict resolution and peace management.
He
urged the people not to allow their private interests, social
challenges and political settlement bring disunity among the group.
The
Yagbon-Wura commended the initiators and past leaders of the
Association to continue to work hard and uphold and defend the hard
earned success and image of the Gonja Kingdom.
He also urged the
chiefs in Gonjaland to use arbitration, customs and traditions of the
land to settle chieftaincy cases, which he said, were affecting
development in the area.
He appealed to the Government to help find a lasting solution to the acute water problem in Damongo.
Mr
Alhassan Dramani, the President of the Gonjaland Youth Association,
appealed to the Government to consider setting up a satellite campus of
the University for Development Studies in Damongo.
He said though
the Government had undertaken some key infrastructural development
projects in the area, as Oliver Twist, they would request for more
projects.
He urged the Government to give the people its
assurance that Cocobod would support them to go into the cultivation and
production of jute sacks through a Public Private Partnership
arrangement.
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