My January – February 2023 “cross-over” is from Tamale-Bolgatanga to Wa-Tumu. After spending the last week of January in the Upper East region, it was now the Upper West’s turn.
As the Passion Air flight landed at Wa Airport, I was struck by the reflection of the aluminum roofs of the buildings, knowing aluminum is a good conductor of heat, and secondly the greenness of Wa. Again, this time we landed on the airport tarmac. On my last visit in 1998 with the students of the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College (GAFCSC), a Ghana Air Force aircraft landed us on the rough unpaved surface of the Wa airstrip.
Interestingly, when I tell family and friends, especially the younger generation, that I am in Wah, the question some ask is, Where is Wah? When I told them where it was, they asked me what brought me there.
Off
Wa is the capital of the Upper West Region of Ghana. Until 1983, our entire northern territory bordering Burkina Faso was one large area known as the Upper Region, with Bolgatanga as the capital. However, in 1983, the Upper West Region was carved out of the Upper Region and Wa was made the new capital. The other half of the Upper Region became the new Upper East Region with Bolgatanga still the capital. Towns in the Upper East region include Navrongo, Bawku, Jebilla and Paga, famous for its crocodile pond.
Towns in the Upper West Region include Nadoli, Jirapa, Nandom, Lara, Hamile and Tumu.
Tumu is the capital of Sissala East District, one of the 11 districts of the Upper West Region. Sissala East shares a border with the Upper East Region.
CEO
Early in the morning on February 1, 2023, we left for Tumu under armed escort. With Tumu close to the border and thousands of refugees crossing into Baku in the Upper East region as a result of recent events in Burkina Faso, Wah, commanding officer of the 10 Mechanized Battalion, is taking no chances. The 160 km journey took about three and a half hours. After interacting with the forces teaching about gender mainstreaming, our return journey took three and a half hours, returning to Wa at 6pm.
Although some work is said to have been done on it, the road between Wa and Tumu is generally in poor condition. As our team traveled from Tamale to Bolgatanga on our visit to the Far East, I felt that the road, which was in good condition twenty years ago, had deteriorated. For our Va-Tumu journey, we donned masks not out of fear of Covid-19, but to prevent the dust that filled our air-conditioned bus from charging straight into our lungs.
In Tumu, we had a happy reunion with the immediate past Director of Religious Affairs (Chaplain-General) of the Ghana Armed Forces, Rev. Col. David Bunsibo (Rtd). He is now the parish priest of the Catholic Church in Tumu.
discussion
When I met my retired senior colleague at the airport, he told me that it took thirteen hours by road from Accra to Wage, until commercial flights came to Wage. Hailing from Va, he is very appreciative of Vagge Passion Air’s commercial flights, which have reduced the travel time to one and a half hours.
But, once alighting in Wa, moving to the districts is a nightmare as one has to travel on bumpy and dusty tracks called roads. Certainly, my journey to Nandom, Lara and Jirapa some twenty years ago was not as bad as what I experienced this time in Tumu. People of the Upper West lamented that roads are dusty and potholed during monsoons, while vehicles carrying food items get stuck in mud for days. In the process, the food items they carry become particularly perishable, rotting.
Sixty years after independence, the state of our roads in the Upper West makes me wonder who we are as a people and what kind of people we vote to lead us. So, what have upper west MPs and politicians done for their region through government as we asked when we were in the upper east region?
I don’t notice the fact that the roads are not good in Accra where I live. In fact, the neighboring community 20 is completely tarred, the cry in my community (18) and 19 is that we have no important people like MPs/politicians living here. So in a residential area that attracts high property rates by the Tema Municipal Assembly (TMA) and equally high ground rent by the Tema Development Corporation (TDC), the roads are simply bad.
However, for roads connecting regional capitals such as Tamale-Bolgatanga and Wa to district capitals such as Tumu with potential for economic activity, their current states are deplorable. In the 1960s under President Nkrumah, Bolgatanga had a canned meat factory called Volta Corned Beef. Pwalugu had a tomato canning factory.
Speaking to some of the youth in the two regions, they are disillusioned because they feel completely disconnected from Ghana. For them, government after government has turned their backs on them. In fact, in the news on 9 February 2023, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Ghana threatened to picket in front of the seat of government with some youths from Bawku, if the government did not show interest in them. However, he admitted that several internal and ethnic conflicts in the North have not helped development. The large number of troops and resources regularly pumped into the North to manage conflicts could have been more positively invested in development.
Without peace, there can be no development, especially in the face of scarce resources.
Incidentally on Wednesday, 8 February 2023, Joy FM discussed the appalling state of the Accra-Tema Motorway. This killer-stretch with almost daily accidents/accidents, despite all lofty promises to fix it, has now become an Accra-Tema “motor-no-way”, far from the safe motorway Osagyefo Da Kwame Nkrumah built in 1965.
By the way, why are we offended when we are called an “underdeveloped” country and prefer the euphemistic, “developing” country? Because, it is said that the admission of the problem is the first step to the solution. Perhaps a trip away from Accra like the one I just had will make us more humble and less talkative!
Leadership, leadership!
Wake up fellow Ghanaians!
Brig General Dan Frimpong (RTD)
Former CEO, Association of African Peace Support Trainers
Nairobi, Kenya
President of the Council
University College of Family Health
Accra
[email protected]
Source: Brig General Dan Frimpong (Rtd), former CEO, Association of African Peace Support Trainers, Nairobi, Kenya
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