In Kennedy Agyapong’s bid to make political mincemeat using his own regional balance ignorantly classified all five regions of the North as the North.
A move that has consistently been criticized by various stakeholders and policymakers.
In what appears to be a campaign in the Eastern region, the NPP firebrand is heard telling party delegates that Ghanaians will not vote for another person from the Eastern Region, as well as a candidate from the North.
From his argument, he has reduced the sixteen administrative regions that are constitutionally enshrined to twelve.
Meanwhile, the country continues to have sixteen administrative regions, namely: the Savannah Region,
Mr Agyapong, the businessman, in his analysis, is heard saying, “In politics, we will tell you the truth and the truth is that Eastern Region had their president for eight years and you think and you think Ghanaians are going to vote the next person from Eastern region?
Ghanaians will not vote. Eastern go, Eastern come will never work so if Eastern go, Eastern come will never work, Northern go, Northern come will also not work so the only alternative is Kennedy Agyapong. I am from the Central region; NPP should give the Central region an opportunity. If you vote for anybody from the Central region, it means you have hope for the future, it will come to Volta Region too. This time your slogan should be Eastern Go, Eastern Come, No way, Northern Go, Northern Come, No way. God bless you”.
Ghanaian preacher Eastwood Anaba has in the past urged the people of Ghana not to box all five region in the Northern part of the country as one.
He holds the view that classifying Northern, Upper East, Upper West, North East and Savannah regions as one is a lazy way of doing things, indicating that the five regions are distinct in nature and have different development needs.
“The three regions have different potentials and characteristics which must be identified and dealt with separately with the best of approach to enhance their development”, he advised.
Speaking at the 2nd media festival organized by The Press Foundation, TPF in Bolgatanga he said:”I believe what our journalists can do to help us is to help us identify, specify and occupy the Upper East region, the Upper West region and the Northern region. Journalists should champion the cause of identifying these regions as separate regions, requiring different developmental approaches. The second thing we need to be able to develop is what I would call defiance. Defiance is a major step to development.
We have a gravitational force like depending on others to develop us. We can’t sit in the Upper East region and say we need some of the oil money. What about the granite money? If you go to Bongo, where Honourable Manasseh comes from, children climb these beautiful rocks and use them for open defecation. We defecate on our rocks and we are [asking] God for somebody’s oil to come to us. We should be aggressive, passionate and angry enough to develop this place,” Rev. Anaba told the gathering.
He explained that putting the regions together as one is partly to blame for the underdevelopment questioning where are the three regions of the south or western regions and Eastern.
In his view, the lazy classification is a way by which policymakers have over the period adapted to ignore the areas which is why these places continue to be poor.
“If you move around Ghana, whether is the media, educationists, politicians…You would realize that there is an expression which doesn’t exist but we have used it so often that it has become a reality. That expression is ‘The three regions of the north’, the northern territory; the upper regions; the northern regions; I have asked Presidents of this country, I have asked educationists and I have asked politicians where are the three southern regions? Where are the two eastern regions? Where are the two western regions? So why the three northern regions? So definitely, it is a certain form of classification to find a way of classifying you just to ignore you” he said.
