Dr Nsoh needs support to succeed
I have been forced to revisit the issue of the way party activists treat regional ministers in the Upper West Region for various reasons.
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For some time now, it has become a sine qua non for party activists to always agitate for the removal of regional ministers when they are seen to be serving mother Ghana and not party interest.
These activists believe that when their party is in power, the regional ministers should deal with them only and not the larger society. In the Upper West Region, it happened to some of these ministers, particularly Mr Mahmud Khalid who refused to kowtow to the whims and caprices of his party apparatchiks, leading to the hijacking and burning of tender documents.
The reason? Mr Khalid had insisted on due process but his party people wanted to have their way, and never saw eye to eye with him which eventually led to his dismissal from office. Today, people always praise Mr Khalid for insisting on the right thing.
Thinking that this behaviour of these apparatchiks was going to be the end, similar scenario is gradually rearing its ugly head in this relatively peaceful region of Ghana. Why? Since being posted to the region, Dr Ephraim Aveah Nsoh, just like Mr Khalid, has been pushing for behavioural change in attitude and has gone further to declare zero tolerance for shoddy work by contractors.
Dr Nsoh had at a point in time complained bitterly about how contractors in the region were fleecing their own people through shoddy work and even ordered stoppage of work on a dormitory block at the Wa Senior High Technical School. This did not go down well with some party executives and some of us (writers) were accused of publishing the names of their companies in a story carried by the Daily Graphic.
Another example was when Dr Nsoh called on the Motor Traffic and Transport Division of the Upper West Regional Police Command to strictly apply traffic rules in the region in order to arrest the rising trend of accidents involving motorbikes and tricycles.
In the Wa municipality, never a day passes without motorbike accidents leading to deaths and serious injuries.Therefore, in order to arrest the situation, Dr Nsoh called on the police not to spare anyone arrested for flouting traffic rules.
This did not go down well with party activists and they, therefore, refused to come out to welcome the Vice President, Paa Kwesi Amissah – Arthur, at the Wa airstrip during the recently held National Best Teacher’s Award Ceremony.
“I did not even realise that they did not come. If that is their reason, then I’m happy because we did not lose any life through careless riding,” he once told this writer.
This is the region where everybody wants to be a contractor. Party people who do not even have a trowel want to become contractors overnight. To them, what the regional minister is doing is an abomination which must not be countenanced.
They believe that contractors should be handed jobs without going through tender. To these people, Dr Nsoh must be stopped in his tracks. No wonder some party activists have started agitating and want the status quo to remain.
It is in line with this that there have been calls for help for Dr Nsoh to succeed in his developmental plans for the region. The media must endeavour to educate the people on the need to follow due process and its attendant benefits.
Party activists must be made to understand that formal education is another tool for successful life. If they want to become contractors, they can form a company with a membership of about 10 with diverse backgrounds to bid for contracts. This will also go a long way to also build their capacity to bid for higher contracts.
The local FM stations must also join the crusade to change the perceptions of party activists, especially through local languages so as to send the message to the rank and file. These stations must not allow people with parochial interests to use their FM stations to once again scuttle the forward marching of the Upper West.
The media must bear in mind that it will be doing a great disservice to the people of the region if it allowed itself to be used by people to pursue their own agenda.
With these and other educational tools at the disposal of the regional co-ordinating council, it is believed that within the not-too-distant future, the Upper West Region shall become the best region in the country.
