1-village-1-dam: Akufo-Addo clueless about it - Mahama

President John Mahama has pooh-poohed the “one-village-one-factory” campaign pledge of the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo, saying the latter does not “know what he is talking about.”

According to Mahama, the promise by Akufo-Addo was made out of desperation to court cheap votes in the forthcoming presidential race slated for December 7, 2016.

The presidential nominee of the NPP addressing the Bolgatanga Traditional Council in the Upper East region on his plans for Ghana’s agriculture said: “As far as this part of our world is concerned, I want to go further and talk about one village one dam.”

But speaking on Tuesday during the inauguration of the 21st community Day Senior High School at Kanjarga in the Builsa South Constituency of the Upper East region, Mahama said: “SADA is embarking on the provision of irrigation dams all over the Savanna parts of the country…and so they have done a study of all the prominent water sources and for those that are viable we are going to barrage dams across them so that we hold back the water during the dry season for dry season gathering.”

He continued: “Most of our communities have what we mistakenly call dams but are actually dugouts. Most of our communities have dugout, but some of them have silted. SADA has begun a program de-silting them so that we can continue to use them to water our livestock.”

“I’m very happy chief raised this because there is a confusion in the minds of some people about what a dam is. And so when somebody says one village one dam, he really doesn’t know what he is talking about.”

According to him, “Most of the time they are referring to the small dugouts we have that are used mostly for livestock watering. These dugouts do not have a water source. They are normally fed by rainfall during the raining season and then in the dry season; they hold the water so that the animals can get water to drink until the next raining season starts.

“But the dams that are viable that we use for irrigation normally are generated from a stream or a small river and what you do is you build a dam across it and hold back the water…that’s able to hold enough water for irrigation and dry season gathering and not all village has that kind of water source—and so you cannot say you are building a dam in every single village.”