Builsa North constituency under the Builsa District in the Upper East Region of Ghana is made up of towns including Nawaasa, Chuchuliga ,Wonema and other peripherals with Sandema as its District Administrative capital. It is boarded to the North by the Kassena Nankana West District, to the east by the Sisala East District, to the west by Kassena Nankana East District and to the south by Builsa South District.
Agriculture, which is practiced mostly on a subsistence level dependent on the unpredictable rainfall patterns is the mainstay of Builsa North’s economy.
Statistics from the 2010 Population and Housing Census indicates that Builsa North has a population of 56,477 with males constituting 49.2% whiles females constitute 50.8%. However, a major percentage of the people here are mostly rural.
Currently, the Member of Parliament for the constituency is Hon. James Agalga who doubles as the Deputy Interior Minister. Going into this year’s election, he faces opposition from NPP’s Thomas Kofi Alonsi.
In entering the constituency, Nawaasa, surrounded by Nanyobio and Lognema is one of the first villages to come into contact with. This village is where the tarred road from Navrongo ends. Residents have had to endure the dust from the untarred road, a worrying situation a resident, Agalga Kwaku, describes in these words, “The road is a problem, they came to remove the top that they are coming to do it but it is three months and they have not come and start. It is disturbing us and giving us the sickness, we can’t sit here.”
Under a tree sits some youth of the village numbering about eight, both males and females playing the game of cards. The look on their face and the extent of recordings in their records book was a clear indication that they had been at it for long and it was their daily routine.
To them, most of whom are farmers, the only way to keep themselves busy is to engage in the game of cards until the rains starts. Ateng Davis who joined the farming profession because he could not afford Senior High School education after completing Junior High School in 2007 thinks that “we need dams so that during the dry season we can also manage that to produce our crops”.
Nawaasa and its peripherals are not connected to the National grid and according to Ateng “members of the community have to travel to the Chuchuliga, a neighboring town to charge their phones and they pay one cedi for charging their phones.”
Another dire worry of this community is the lack of a school. Residents rue the trauma students have had to go through in walking several kilometers to the neighboring town for school. According to Agalga Kwaku “when the children are going to school the car is worrying.”
Nawaasa according to residents have wallowed in utter neglect by their leaders over the years such that when residents were asked to point to a single project done for them by their Member of Parliament, all they could say was “as for that we don’t know. We can’t point anything. He promise us a lot of things but we never see them”.
The youth here are planning on not voting in the upcoming election. According to them, it will be better for them not to vote than give their mandate to people and just get neglected all the time.
“We are even planning as the youth not to vote again because since we started voting we didn’t see any changes or any promise that they promised us, we didn’t get one to show that maybe the next term he will be able to do this. We will not vote again. I know some people will vote but if we don’t vote we will know that we didn’t vote for the person so we will not expect anything,” a sad Ateng said.
From Nawaasa, we crawled through the “manhole” ridden road and experienced for ourselves, the pain the people have had to endure for many years and gradually made our way to the administrative capital, Sandema. With the heat of elections turning up each second, it should have been expected that campaigning activities will have been at its apex in the constituency. However, that was not the case. The euphoria surrounding elections is not felt with most constituents being indifferent.
“If I want I can go and vote if I don’t want I will not vote. I have not decided on whether I will vote or not,” a seamstress who wants to remain anonymous told me in Sandema when I asked her what will influence her choice in the upcoming elections.
Regardless of this, Sandema is awash with posters of incumbent Member of Parliament, Hon. James Agalga, signifying the hold the National Democratic Congress has in the constituency whiles the presence of the other Political Parties is not felt.
As we walked through the principal streets of Sandema, a feature noted was that every step we took the youth, mostly the male sex had gathered under trees and in front of stores either conversing or playing the game of cards, ludo or draft, a clear allusion to what Ateng Davis had said about the state of unemployment in the constituency.
In front of one of these stores, sat four young men, two of whom were playing the game of cards whiles the other two were fully engrossed in taking morsels of fufu on the hot afternoon. After pleasantries were exchanged, Awinatey Hippolight who seems informed on the issues agreed to speak to us. He will not want to judge the performance of the Member of Parliament for the area. To him however, challenges in the constituency have been minimized and not eradicated.
Hippolight is however pessimistic about Sandema roads getting fixed, describing his pessimism in the following words “I think the timing of the awarding of the contract is wrong, the timing is very bad. Why some few months to elections. I mean why do you take us serious when it is getting to elections? This road has been lying here for God knows how many years and we have to wait until it is an election year in July and it is awarded on contract. I think it is a political gimmick. Until I see that the road is constructed I will not believe it will be done. Eight years ago under the NPP, they equally said the same thing and they awarded it on contract and did the first coat they left it.”
To Hippolight, the youth unemployment situation in the constituency is sickening but will not blame government fully because some of the youth are not employable with most of them thinking of white color jobs rather being entrepreneur and opportunities.
He however, noted that the unemployment situation cannot be solved with Youth Employment because to him, it cannot be sustained.
It is obvious from my visit and engagement with some residents of Sandema, that unemployment is a major problem in the area particularly for young people and this is rife mostly during the dry season. The deplorable nature of roads in the constituency coupled with unavailability of electricity and water in some communities would play key roles in the verdict of the people on December 7.
By: Offei-Akoto Ayeh/A1RADIOONLINE.COM/GHANA
email: akotoayeh@gmail.com
