AS I
wrote this piece my heart was bleeding. Angry voices blurred from my little
radio set. I could hear a gentleman from a civil society group in Tamale
swearing fire and brimstone should President John Mahama not axe Dr Charles
Jebuni, who has been asked to act as Chief Executive Officer for the Savannah
Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) following the exit of Alhaji Gilbert
Iddi.
In 2010, the enthusiasm was at a
crescendo as the SADA Law (Act 805, 2010) was passed and subsequently
inaugurated to begin work. There had been so much rhetoric about the need for
the establishment of a body to spearhead an agenda to quicken the pace of
development in the north.
So the goose to lay the golden eggs was
finally hatched and it became a popular refrain, particularly from politicians,
that SADA would offer a quick fix to the problems of the north, such as
unemployment, poor road networks, ailing agriculture, environmental
degradation, high illiteracy, name them.
So what went wrong? What has happened to
all the expectations and promises? How could a beautiful initiative suddenly go
bad?
