Stop persecuting successful Northerners - Group

NGO Northern Youth for Peace and Development (NYUPED) claims successful entrepreneurs and businessmen of northern extraction are being targeted by a cabal for destruction.

The group mentioned AGAMS Group Chairman, Roland Agambire; Antrak Air Chairman Asuma Banda and owner of Engineers and Planners (E&P), Ibrahim Mahama, who is also President John Mahama’s brother, as a few northern businessmen who are being targeted.

Rlg Communications and Asongtaba Cottage Industry and Exchange Programmes, subsidiaries of the AGAMS group, were recently directed by the government to refund about Ghc55 million to the state in connection with a contract they had with the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA).

The contracts were also terminated

Ibrahim Mahama’s E&P was recently widely discussed in the media over a US$28 million loan the company needed to payback to ailing Merchant Bank Ghana.

The group, in a statement said: “In the recent past, Mr. Asuma Banda, a prudent businessman suffered a similar faith, when he was being linked to his personal business interests”.

NYUPED said it “regards the action taken by Government in the case of the AGAMS group of companies as very harsh, cruel, unsympathetic, numb, thoughtless, trackless and insensitive”.

Its Executive Director said: “Mr. Agambire for instance, has not only proven to be a man with rare business acumen for, which he has appropriately been acknowledged and honored, in Ghana and Africa, but globally, with several distinguished awards to show, and we believe this is what presents him as a threat to the monopolistic business interests of the Political cabal in the country”.

He added that Agambire is not only a role model for Northerners but has also provided jobs for thousands of Northerners and therefore warned that stifling the businesses of successful Northerners will have a serious adverse impact on the people of the impoverished region.