General News of Tuesday, 21 March 2017

Source: mynewsgh.com

Hand over Kintampo Waterfalls to Gonjas - Gonjaland PRO warns

Image of Kintampo Waterfalls Image of Kintampo Waterfalls

The Public Relations Officer of the Gonjaland Youth Association Mahama Haruna has said that the Chiefs and people of Kintampo should hand over Kintampo Waterfalls to the Tuluwewura of the Gonja traditional area or there will be more deaths.

Speaking on Bole-based Nkilgi Fm, the PRO said his enquiries from historians and custodians of the land have revealed that the people of Kintampo will never know what is causing the disasters at the Kintampo waterfalls until they dig deep.

According to him the people of Tuluwe in Central Gonja District of the Northern region used to perform sacrifices at the falls with a white cow but for some time now the sacrifice has not been done.

According to him, waterfalls area which was Gonjaland to the Brong-Ahafo Region has made Gonjas to lose ownership of the waterfalls which they used to offer sacrifices for every year.

“The people of Kintampo no longer involve the people of Tuluwe in pacifying the gods around the water falls. An elder of Tuluwe in Gonja said more calamities will befall the area if the necessary sacrifices and pacifications are not done”, he revealed.

The comment of the Gonjaland PRO seems to agree with the Kontihene of Kintampo, Nana Owusu Kinkra who said traditional authorities as a matter of urgency should carry out their traditional duties by pacifying the gods of the area in order to avoid a future disaster.

Sunday’s disaster which resulted in the death of about 20 students and scores of injuries is second of such unfortunate occurrence barely a year after the infamous Metro Mass Transit (MMT) accident which claimed over 50 lives in the same area.

Coincidentally, Sunday’s storm disaster is about 100 meters away from the scene where the Metro Mass bus had a head-on collision with a truck carrying tomatoes traveling from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso heading to Accra on February 17, 2016.

The Chief is of the view that traditional authorities who are supposed to be custodians of the land are shirking their responsibilities leading to the needless deaths in the area.

“We must immediately rise up and pacify the gods. We cannot sit unconcerned while precious lives of persons who are not indigenes are lost through our actions. The gods are angry because we have refused to appease them in one way or the other”, he said.

He has attributed the waterfall disaster to the anger of ancestors following the inability of traditional authorities to pacify the gods for over a period of time.

He stated that, there were some spiritual requirements that should always be performed by Chiefs in the country, since they are spiritual leaders to maintain natural law and order to serve as checks and balances to prevent such unfortunate instances.