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Opinions of Sunday, 14 September 2014

Columnist: The Republic

Is IMANI-Ghana gradually losing its credibility?

I once listened to Dr. Kumbour on the need to invest into intellectual research work and upgrading knowledge. I was deeply touched and my respect and admiration for the man increased after that delivery.

I have always had untainted respect and admiration for the Imani group and the hardworking personalities working for the outfit but I must be blunt here that the huge respect has dwindled to its lowest level because of this well designed and orchestrated moves by the group to unreasonably hijack and attack any initiative by this government, not based on any balanced scientific alternative ideas, but based on politically inclined motives targeted at making this government look bad locally and on the international stage.

Yea we must serve our dear country from different endeavors but, to serve well, we must serve with understanding. To understand the Ghanaian way of life and how relevant it is to our transformation agenda, we must get back to the ancestors from whom we are bred. The Imani operatives must get down to the ground beneath their feet, and study well the geography of our country and the social chemistry of the people and of others with which they are connected.

I listened to Franklin Cudjoe on one radio station rubbishing the idea of building another international airport at Tamale, In fact I got confused listening to Franklin, his reasons for rubbishing the idea are too ordinary to be coming from the President of an entity like Imani. If it has done deep research work into our Aviation evolution, it would have realized that, we have gotten nowhere with matters concerning Aviation and its development.

Since the era when the Inspector-General of Police was responsible for all matters concerning aviation in the Gold Coast, there was this plan to expand our landing grounds. There were landing grounds at Accra in the Eastern Province of the colony, and at Tamale in the Northern territories, whilst Takoradi Harbour in the Western Province of the Colony was targeted for use as Seaplane base.

In fact the irony is that from time to time, visits were paid to the Colony by single Aircraft, and Royal Air Force machines from Heliopolis visited both Accra and Tamale in 1929 and 1933.The idea to bring closer the Northern Sector in our development policies and programmes has been paramount from the colonial days. I don’t it Imani must reduce this very important initiative to tomatoes rotten debate or, unnecessarily incite the public against the establishment based on frivolous disposition.

The population of the country swells every year, businesses grow every day and our relationship with other foreign entities and international business organizations improves every day, we must focus on expanding every aspect of our national stables which would facilitate and accelerate our dealings with the international business front. The idea to construct the Tamale Airport has been on the books since the colonial days, and became one of Nkrumah’s dreams for the northern belt. In fact since the establishment of GCAA in 1930 first as a unit of Public Works Department, the Northern sector Airport has been a dream, in fact, the first practical attempt was in 1953 when GCAA was granted full departmental status. Various governments have captured this idea in their preamble.

The last time I touched on one of its unbalanced condemnation of government initiatives, Franklin saw it as an attempt to gain recognition, I thought and still think it isn’t necessary replying to that comment, if there is someone whose posture these days represent that thinking, it must be Franklin, yea you can make claims of enjoying huge international recognition but remember that, we still have neo-colonists organizations working out there still with the dream of heading to Africa this time not with the deceitful religious message, guns, gun power and the their slave chains, but using some weak academic warlords to perpetuate their obnoxious plans.

This is the reason why we shouldn’t see every international recognition as divine to fall victims to their wicked plans against the emerging forces on the continent.

Personally, I think this attitude of vigorously going against every initiative coming from this government is becoming too much to contain, it is very necessary and important monitoring government activities and keeping them on their toes but the motives behind such alternative ideas must also be scrutinized. We have huge deficit in the area of social development, we need to vigorously work to improve the infrastructure across the country, this is not the time to experiment or, allow some politically colored Think Tanks to stagnate our growth as a people.

Long Live Africa