The year 2014 will remain indelible in the minds of many people in the Northern Region for the good and bad reasons.
The year will remain refreshing for many of the inhabitants who witnessed the sod cutting for work to commence on the expansion and upgrade of the Tamale Airport to an international standard by President John Dramani Mahama.
The first phase of the project consists of the extension of the runway from the current 2,480 metres to about 3,940 metres and the installation of a complete lighting system to accommodate bigger aircrafts.
Work is still in progress and the contractors are expected to complete the project in September 2015.
In the roads and health sector the region also witnessed significant progress: the Damongo- Fulfuso road which is nearing completion has reduced the travelling hours of users of that road to the Upper West Region.
Work is also in progress on the Eastern Corridor roads contracted to Messrs G.S. International Developer GH Ltd and the China Jiangxi International Corp.
The Eastern Corridor road starts from the Tema Motorway Roundabout in the Greater Accra Region and ends at Kulungugu in the Upper East Region on the north-eastern border with Burkina Faso.
Moving in to 2015 it is the expectations of many inhabitants of the region to see roads such as Walewale-Gambaga, Tamale-Salaga, Nalerigu-Bunkrugu/Yunyo, Tamale-Kumbungu, and Tamale-Karaga-Gushegu among others be given a facelift like others areas.
The commissioning of the first phase of the GH¢40million Tamale Teaching hospital by President Mahama to improve healthcare delivery in the Savannah ecological Regions of the North was also the biggest project to have hit the Northern Region.
The 40 million Ghana cedis facility comprises accident and emergency center, CCT scan center, maternity ward and a 400-bed accommodation.
Work on the second phase of that same project is in progress, it is however the expectations of many visitors to the facility that authorities of the health center will work hard to reduce incidents of petty theft, fraud and extortion in that facility in the new year.
Construction of the abandoned Tamale Aboabo Supermarket project is also on course. When completed it will consist of a two-storey block with 92 stores for cereal traders and a supermarket area with 120 shops.
Many communities in the Region have also been connected to the national grid under the rural electrification project initiated by government.
The decision of the Ghana Football Association to move football matches of the national team the Black Stars to the Tamale Sports Stadium for the first time will remain an unforgettable experience.
In the political arena the New Patriotic Party (NPP) rewarded the people of the North Region and the family of the late former vice president, Alhaji Aliu Mahama, when it held its national conference in Tamale to elect national officers to lead the party.
This decision by the council of elders of the party brought immeasurable benefit to the region, the hospitality industry and other businesses profited from that conference.
At the Regional level both the ruling party the National Democratic congress and the NPP both elected executives to steer the affairs of the party in the region.
While the NPP elected Daniel Bugre Naabu as their new Regional chairman, the NDC overwhelmingly voted for Chief Awudu Sofo Azorka who until that election was the acting Regional chairman of the party, in an election that the Electoral Commission decided to abstain itself from.
The EC decided to abstain from conducting the election due to an injunction served on the NDC by two members of the party on grounds that they were unjustifiable disqualified in their bids to serve at various positions of the party.
There were also certain developments that impacted negatively on the lives of the inhabitants of the Region.
In June, 2014, the barbaric act that led to the murder of the Paramount Chief of the Nanumba Traditional Area, Naa Dasana Andani, along with three other family members by some unknown assailants at his palace in Bimbilla, is etched forever in the minds and heart of the people of the Northern Region.
The attack also inflicted severe injuries on some five persons including a five-month-old baby, who were subsequently admitted at the Tamale Teaching Hospital.
Following the murder, a conflict ensued between the family of the overlord and the police over the release of the deceased’s body for burial.
Describing the attack as “dastardly and despicable crime that must be condemned in the strongest terms”, then Minister of Information and Media Relations, Mahama Ayariga, called for calm in the area.
The government subsequently placed a bounty of GH₵10,000 on the murderers.
Seven persons were picked up by the police for investigation. These seven people are currently on trial.
The expectations of the family of the murdered will be that moving in to 2015, the state should be able to produce the perpetrators of that heinous crime.
The murder of Mustapha Abdul Rashid at Aboabo timber market and Mohammed Naziru at sagnerigu, that escalated into communal violence leading to the torching of Radio Justice, was also a bigger issue that cannot be overlook in 2014.
Series of communal and ethnic violence in Gushegu District between two Konkomba farming communities (Birimba and Yiyamba) led to the death of three people.
The same situation led to several deaths in Bunkrugu, Nakpanduri among others.
The Northern Regional Security Council led by the Regional Minister Alhaji Mohammed Muniru Limuna kept pushing for lasting peace in this protracted violence.
Their efforts yielded positive results in June 2014, when Konkombas and Bimobas in Nakpanduri resolved to end their three decade long protracted land dispute.
This was done at a unification durbar at the palace of the Nayiri, the overlord of the Mamprugu traditional area, Naa Bohagu Mahami Abdulai Sheriga in Nalerigu in the East Mamprusi District.
Chiefs and the youth from the two feuding ethnic groups chewed a ritual cola nut from the Nayiri to seal their unity for peaceful coexistence.
One cannot leave the year under review in Northern Region without looking at what came to be known as the Tamale Sex Scandal.
A number of ladies were captured in leaked pornographic photographs and videos with a man known as Kamil Wemah with the women in different sexual positions either being pounded from the back or in front with others gleefully licking the manhood of the guy and smiling to the cameras at the same time.
The incident caused a lot of furore not only in Tamale but the whole of the country.
That scandal caused several women involved in a leaked sex tape to flee Tamale.
The Tamale Dakpemah Naa Dawuni Alhassan famously suggested that the ladies should be banished from the region.
He was incensed by the nude pictures and sex videos that went viral in Tamale and other parts of the country saying it is an embarrassment to the whole region.
Hundreds of schools in the Northern Region, are in dire need of more than 7,600 trained teachers.
The Northern Regional Director of Education, Paul Apanga, revealed at an educational forum in Tamale that about 404 schools in the region do not have a single trained teacher, leaving the running of the educational establishments in the care of volunteers and untrained teaching personnel.
He said at the forum that, the situation has accounted for the abysmal performance of schools, in the various examinations conducted by the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC), requiring thousands of teachers to be posted to the area.
“The region needs more than 7,652 teachers to occupy the various schools to help improve on the academic performance in the region,” he said.
In 2015, the expectation is to see parents, teachers, and policy makers playing their roles effectively to remedy these soaring issues.
Source: Myjoyonline.com
