Don't Renew Mandate Of NDC Sitting MPs In North - NORPRA(Benjamin Xornam Glover, 20th January 2012)

Governance and advocacy civil society organisation based in Bolgatanga, the Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy,(NORPRA), has urged delegates to the NDC primaries to reject all sitting members of parliament from the three regions of Northern Ghana by voting massively against them.

According to the President of NORPRA, Mr Bismark Ayorogo Adongo, the call had been necessitated by what the group sees as a grand failure on the part of the sitting MPs to lobby and bring development projects to the northern part of Ghana.

“Sitting MPs in the three regions of northern Ghana do not deserve re-election because over the years, they have failed to do enough by raising issues of critical concerns relating to the lives of the ordinary citizens of the constituencies,” he asserted.

“They have not been able to secure a better deal for the people of the three regions and have over the years misrepresented the people who voted them into parliament”.

Citing examples, Mr Adongo said, the sitting MPs had failed to bring pressure to bear on government to keep its part of the social contract entered with the good people of northern Ghana, that is the support for the Savanna Accelerated Development Programme.

“It is a fact that this sitting government promised the people of Northern Ghana an allocation of GHc200 million for SADA and GHc100 million every year for 20 years and to urge the country’s development partners to contribute up to $ 200 million for SADA.

Since 2009 up to date, the government of Ghana haven’t been able to execute a quarter of this social contract entered with the good people of northern Ghana. Yet our members of Parliament, none of them have raised the issue on the floor of Parliament or outside of Parliament to demand accountability,” he said.

He said he was of the firm opinion that had the MPs from the three northern regions come together to raise concerns, the government would have taken action and done what was right by allocating the needed resources to SADA so that programmes and projects could be implemented in Northern Ghana and dealt with the endemic poverty in the area. “None of the sitting MPs have done that and we think that is not fair enough”.

Secondly, the NORPRA president said the sitting MPs failed to lobby for some development projects out of the recent $ 3billion Chinese loan facility secured by government saying had that lobbying been done, the three regions which faced serious infrastructural needs would have been catered for.

“There are a lot of infrastructure projects that are going to be executed out of these huge loan facility in recent times yet no single project is coming to northern Ghana. Our MPs who are in the forefront of this debate, none of them saw the need to raise it for the attention of the entire parliament and government that northern Ghana deserved better in the sharing of these loan facility”, he said.

Mr Adongo also accused the sitting MPs for failing to exercise oversight responsibility on government by allowing the redirection of a $ 500 million facility from Brazil meant for the construction of a hydro–electric project at Pwalugu and Juale into the Eastern corridor road projects adding that had the project been executed could have boosted the agriculture and energy sectors, “with our MPs watching, the funds were diverted to the construction of the eastern corridor project”.

“We are not saying that the eastern corridor road project is not important but of equally importance to us is the hydro-electric dam project which will harness and harvest the vast amount of the annual flood waters which causes destruction to lives and property. By the way, the road project is not even starting from the north but rather from the south and only God knows when it will extend to the Northern part of Ghana”, he said.

NORPRA also lampooned the sitting MPs, for what they termed failure to regularly brief their constituents on their activities in parliament while on break or recess.

“Even in instances, where civil society organisation organised “Meet your MP sessions, some of the sitting MPs failed to attend.“Some time we want to believe that one need special intervention and the almighty God to get our MPS to grace an occasion to explain his role in policy formulation”

“They only avail themselves when is time to renew their mandate and hence the call on the delegates to demand accountability before renewing their mandate”, he said. Some sitting MPs seeking re-elections in the Upper East Region when contacted on phone for a reaction on the matter declined to comment.