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General News of Wednesday, 30 September 2020

Source: www.rainbowradioonline.com

Mahama’s legacy for Northern Region was the guinea fowls that flew to Burkina Faso – Bawumia

File photo of guinea fowls File photo of guinea fowls

Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia says there is no legacy former President John Dramani Mahama can point to in the Northern part of Ghana except the guinea fowls that flew to Burkina Faso.

The Vice President has therefore challenged the former president to point to a single achievement in the Northern region.

He said unlike the NPP, the NDC left office without putting in place any significant policy to transform residents in the Northern region.

The Asongtaba guinea fowl project was said to have gulped GH¢15million (¢150billion) while GH¢32million (¢320billion) has been spent on the afforestation project, with no trace of the trees.

The issue became a major corruption tag that was used against the then NDC government.

Reacting to this, the Vice President said the NPP has embarked on several projects that have never been done since Ghana’s independence.

He said the most important project is the Pwalugu Dam Project which has remained in our books without being done and that is a signature project and there is no investment that will surpass it in the Northern region.

He added the NDC cannot point to one single project it did through SADA in the 57 constituencies of the Northern region.

Meanwhile, the Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia also took former President John Dramani Mahama to the cleaners over the latter’s claim that the one village one dam policy is a monumental waste of taxpayers’ money.

Dr Bawumia says Mr Mahama lacks an understanding of how the dams work and why they were constructed.

Mr John Mahama some few weeks ago called the Akufo-Addo government’s One Village One Dam project “a monumental waste of tax payer’s money”.

According to him, the government has failed to provide value for money in the execution of the policy.

The One Village One Dam policy was an agricultural driven initiative by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to build dams for irrigation purposes and to promote dry season farming in the Northern part of Ghana.

Per the policy, about 560 dams were to be built by the end of 2020, however, according to the former president, the few that were successfully constructed have either been washed away by heavy torrential rains or are unable to hold any water.

He said, “The promises sounded very good and Ghanaians said let’s give them a try. Today the dams that they talked about are dugouts, they are not even proper dugouts because most of our dugouts are able to keep water during the dry season.

“These dugouts when the Minority went to inspect them in January-February most of them were dry…So the one-village one-dam has been a monumental waste of taxpayers’ money,” he concluded.

But reacting to these comments on Accra based Asempa Fm, the Vice President said the former president does not even appreciate that 10 dams have been constructed at his own backyard from where he comes from.

When asked if the number of dams were not small considering the promise by the NPP in 2016 to construct a dam each in a village of the over 5,000 villages in the Northern region, he said if Ghana was constructing small dams since independence, we would have seen several dams in modern times, hence the NPP should be commended.

The dams he added has saved lives and brought relief to residents in the communities where they were constructed.