Tamale, April 27, GNA - Vice President John Dramani Mahama has commended the Catholic Church for its religions tolerance demonstrated over the years and the initiation of inter religious dialogue amongst various religious groups in the country. He also praised the Catholic Church for the immense contribution it had made in education, health, economic development, conflict resolution and development of infrastructure. The Vice President said this in Tamale where he was the guest of honour at the installation of Most Rev Philip Naameh as the Archbishop of the Tamale Archdiocese.

He replaced Most Rev Gregory Kpiembaya who has retired. Vice president Mahama said though the creation of a new region is a constitutional mandate the prerogative lies in the hand of the chiefs and various tribes of the Northern Region to decide. He said it should not be seen as one tribe championing the cause of the creation of a separate region from the Northern Region. In his homily Most Rev. Naameh appealed to all scholars of northern decent living home and abroad to unite and bring lasting peace and development to the area.

The Most Rev Naameh said to achieve this, the people of northern Ghana must re-orient their psyche towards national integration and development by building a lasting process of healing deep seated wounds, creating trust between their neighbours and restoring ethnic groups that had been humiliated and devastated in the recent past. He said what northerners should strive for in the current political dispensation was to fight for a strong political will of elected governments to be committed to equal development of all parts of Ghana. Archbishop Naameh commended the government for planning to carve another region out of the Northern Region but cautioned that the boundaries of the new region should not be identifiable with a particular ethnic group as this might create more problems than solving existing ones.