Vice President Alhaji Dr Mahamudu Bawumia on Friday, called for strong collaboration between the Bolgatanga, Nangodi, Bongo and Tongo (BONABOTO) and other ethnic unions in the Upper East Region to promote peace, unity and development.
He said it was good to be individually brilliant and to have strong core competencies, and stressed that “unless you are able to work in a team and harness each other’s core competencies, you will always perform below bar because there will always be situations at which you will do poorly and someone else does well.”
He said teamwork was mainly about situational leadership, and reiterated that “If we collaborate effectively and efficiently, Upper East Region will not be left out in getting its fair share of the national cake.”
Dr Bawumia said this in a speech read for him by Madam Paulina Patience Abayage, the Upper East Regional Minister at the 11th Bi-Annual National Delegates Congress of BONABOTO held at Sumbrungu, a suburb of the Bolgatanga Municipality.
The Congress was held on the theme; “Enhancing Integrated Community Development – the Role of BONABOTO,” and brought together sons and daughters of the Region across the country.
Dr Bawumia said BONABOTO did not exist for the interest of its members alone, but for the total development of the BONABOTO areas, and called on the group to strengthen its activities to empower their people, especially women, children and people with vulnerabilities to venture into areas presumed to be for some class of people.
The Vice President said constant communication between members of the group would create a bond between leadership of the group and all the people within their catchment areas, and entreated them to engage politicians, development partners among others to solicit support for the development of the area.
“I wish to passionately appeal to you to encourage communities to initiate self-help projects by taking the lead, and then called on government to assist to complete such projects,” he said.
Dr Bawumia said the eradication of conflicts, corruption, nepotism and other anti-social tendencies from society should not be considered as a responsibility of government alone, but a shared one, adding that “we should all mount a vigorous and persistent campaign against these forces of darkness and enemies of progress and development.”
Dr Andrews Akolaa, President of BONABOTO dispelled the notion that the Association was an occult and partisan group which fought against non-natives working in the Upper East Region, and that BONABOTO was a non-partisan community-based group, which lobbied and fought enemies of progress in the Region to ensure that they got their fair and equitable value as a Region.
He welcomed government’s transformational agenda to create jobs in every District by its industrialisation drive, and said even though the concept was laudable, it did not favour the context and circumstances of the Region.
“The concept of 1D1F is a private sector led programme with government support, so where there exist opportunities in a region, but no private venture capital, the concept will be lost on the people.”
Dr Akolaa said BONABOTO was therefore not surprised that the Region was so far the only one without a single 1D1F project and indicated that the level of poverty and unemployment in the area was a national security issue, insisting that government should not wait for private sector led 1D1F.
“The situation requires direct government intervention to revamp the existing factories (Zuarungu and Pwalugu) or if they are obsolete, build new ones to engender development in the region. After all, all the regions are not equally endowed with resources and ours will require a special intervention by government, this is our call and special appeal to government,” he said.
Source: GNA /Godfred A. PolGNA