My attention has been drawn to a mischievous and false publication on ghanaweb in which the NPP of Navrongo accuses the most efficient and effective MP in the history of Navrongo, Hon. Mark Woyongo, of sharing cash in order to buy his way to power.
For starters, the picture used in the reportage as evidence of Hon. Woyongo distributing money, depicts Hon. Woyongo standing in front of a group of women, apparently placing money on their foreheads. This is what the NPP, in their desperation, would want us to believe is an example of Woyongo sharing money.
Discerning readers , the women captured in the picture of the story are a group of local singers whose melodious tunes could hold everybody spellbound. In fact , it was during one of our mammoth rallies in the villages that these local musicians treated us to beautiful tunes they had composed in appreciation to the NDC for providing them with their basic necessities of life. To wit, potable drinking water, CHIPPs compounds, schools and good roads.
As is the custom of the people of Navrongo and most tribes in Ghana if one is thrilled by the performances of a group of musicians and dancers one shows appreciation in the form of money placed on the foreheads of the performers as a token of ones appreciation. It is a practice which is ubiquitous in Ghana and Africa at large. Why this innocuous cultural and in deed social practice of showing gratitude to sublime performances has been deliberately misconstrued and distorted by the NPP, to give the mendacious impression to the public of vote buying , is anybody’s guess!
In any case, do they share money by placing it on the foreheads of the recipients? The NPP is desperate indeed and as the saying goes a drowning man would definitely cling to a straw!
To me, the NPP is being haunted by its own ghost. I am privy to the fact that the NPP in Navrongo is going around communities distributing boxes of maggi cubes, bowls of Garri and the tiny fish known in Ghanaian parlance as “Amaani”. However, although we have been armed with this information of their sharing- sprees, for quite sometime now ,we didn’t deem it necessary to go to town on it because it won’t change the imminent victory that awaits the NDC on 7 December and the impending electoral doom that is beckoning the NPP. Our stellar development record speaks for itself , so, we are not perturbed or ruffled by the booties and goodies being distributed by the NPP to influence voters. NDC would win in Navrongo Central with a landslide majority both in the presidential and parliamentary elections based on a solid, palpable and unparalleled development record .
Permit me to reiterate without any scintilla of doubt in my mind that the aforementioned publication is as erroneous as it flies in the face of the truth. In fact , Hon Woyongo does not need to share money in order for the NDC to be retained in power . Elections are won based on the social services and developments a government brings to bear on the lives of the people. They are won indeed based on the ability of government to fulfil the needs of the people and not on any other trivial considerations.
Against this backdrop , ever since the NDC came to power Navrongo has seen a new lease of life in every facet of life. For the 8 years that Kufour has been in power and the 10 years that Kofi Adda has been MP, Navrongo has never had a functioning lorry station that is worth its name. What used to be called a lorry station was a network of pools and puddles that were impossible to meander or navigate in order to access transport services anytime it rains. Today, thanks to the assiduity of President John Mahama and of course Hon. Woyongo the lorry station, which is of benefit to all the indigenes of Navrongo ,has been transformed into a spacious, pristine concrete-fortified, ultra modern lorry station fraught with sheds. Now, the rains are no longer a disincentive or obstacle to commuters.
Moreover, under the NPP’s barren leadership, several villages had no access to education owing to lack of schools within close proximity. However, thanks to the purposeful and responsive four-year leadership of John Mahama and Mark Woyongo, Navrongo has been blessed with well over 20 new Junior High Schools to its credit and several primary schools to boot .
Mention must also be made of the fact that under the NDC government Navrongo has benefitted from an 8.5 million-dollar Navrongo Urban Water Rehabilitation project which is presently on-going. This is the largest single investment yet any government has invested in Navrongo , since independence , in the sector of Water. Besides, plans are far advanced by government to install a Water treatment Plant at Tono to provide water to communities in Navrongo, Sandema, Paga and Bolga. Again, Hon Mark Woyongo has installed 132 boreholes across the length and breadth of the Constituency. This is a clear fulfilment of his 2012 promise of bringing water to the doorsteps of the people. Thanks to the NDC,Navrongo is on the cusp of becoming a hub of water in Ghana and by extension the sub region.
At this juncture, it is crucial for me to add that under just four years the NDC government has built several CHIPPS compounds and Clinics across every nook and cranny of the Constituency and this has undoubtedly not only brought relief to the people but also brought health care to their doorsteps . Punyoro, Natugnia, Nyangua, Kologo and Nayagnia are just a few of the beneficiary communities of the CHIPPS compounds project.
The Navrongo War Memorial hospital has also not been left out of the massive transformations in the health sector. A brand new ultra modern Maternity Ward has been built at the War Memorial hospital to ease the womenfolk of the travails of labour. This new state of the arts Maternity Ward can attend to 8 births at a time. This is a massive appreciation or improvement , given the fact that the previous Maternity Ward could only tend to 2 births at a time.
Permit me to revert or avert the minds of readers to the fact that but for the charitable intervention of Hon. Mark Woyongo the Mortuary department of the War Memorial Hospital wouldn’t have been operational. Some few years back ,the Mortuary failed to admit corpse because all its Freezers had become faulty or defective . Bereaved families from Navrongo had to travel to Bolga to deposit their Corpse with its attendant high costs . It had to take the largesse of Hon. Mark Woyongo for the Mortuary to spring back to life after he had procured and replenished it with new freezers and other accoutrements.
Since the World is driven by ICT , the NDC government believes creating a technologically savvy population is indispensable if Ghana is to develop by leaps and bounds. In this connection, the NDC government has erected an ultra modern , up-to-date , state of the arts ICT Centre adjacent the St John Bosco’s Training College for this purpose of ICT education ! This initiative could only have emanated from a visionary government. Thousands of Laptop computers have also been distributed to schools in the Navrongo Central Constituency courtesy the NDC government. Thousands more are yet to be distributed.
Moreover, all the Senior High Schools in the Constituency have seen appreciable facelifts . Navasco, Notre Dame, Awe, St Bernadette, OLL and St Johns SHS’s have all seen massive transformations as far as infrastructure is concerned. New Dormitories and Classrooms have been built to create the congenial environment for effective teaching and learning. Navrongo Senior High School and Awe Senior High School are being fortified with fences to prevent intrusion and encroachment and to protect the students. Students’ enrolment and access has increased tenfold as a result of the expansion of infrastructure in these schools.
A thousand-seater lecture theatre and a Hostel are being built at the University for Development Studies, Navrongo Campus, to augment the infrastructure of the University. The same holds true for the St John Bosco’s Training College !
Relatedly, a new Senior High school has been put up at Gaani through the instrumentality of our hard working MP, Hon. Mark Woyongo. The school is a model Girls Senior High School and it is an architectural masterpiece! This is a clear testament of the commitment of government to improving and empowering the girl child for the vicissitudes of life.
The assiduous MP of Navrongo Central, Hon. Mark Woyongo has disbursed over 45 thousand Cedis to brilliant but needy students in the Constituency to pay for their School fees. Coupled with the fact that the bill of the Junior High School BECE mock exams of all the Schools in the Constituency has been footed over the years by Hon. Woyongo.
The physically challenged have not been left out in the lurch in the all-encompassing government of the NDC. Several social interventions and support systems have been extended to the physically handicapped. For instance, several persons without limbs have been provided with artificial limbs to enable them to lead meaningful lives in Navrongo thanks to the magnanimity of Hon. Woyongo.
Water, they say , is life. Navrongo is plagued with the perennial problem of drought in the dry Seasons. This most often than not result in the drying up of virtually all our water bodies and its concomitant effects on both human and animal life could be dire. For the first time, this year, the prospects are looking brighter thanks to the foresight and hard work of Woyongo. There is an on-going Dam Dredging project undertaken by Hon .Mark Woyongo in Navrongo. So far , the Yusi Dam, Doba Dam and other Dams have been dredged and they are brimming with fresh water . The significance of this project can only be fully appreciated when viewed in the light of the fact that the Yusi Dam in particular is not only the single major source of drinking water to livestock in Navrongo Central but also a reservoir of water for gardening and moulding of bricks. The Yusi Dam also has other recreational uses. The goal of Woyongo is to dredge all Dams in his Constituency.
No one can blink the fact that roads do not only facilitate or spur economic activities but also contributes vicariously to the growth of GDP. In fact, as President Mahama aptly put it during the commissioning of the longest and tallest flyover in West Africa, the Circle interchange, millions of cedis is lost in time wasted on our roads. Deductively, millions of Cedis is therefore saved with government investment on Good roads. In Navrongo multitude of roads have either been constructed or refurbished to give people access to markets and towns under the Mahama administration. Other roads have also been constructed to connect farming communities to market centers and towns. The Nawognia, Gia, Prison view/ Tono junction, and Kolgo roads are just but a few of the roads that have been constructed by the NDC in Navrongo. The Navrongo- Naga road and the Navrongo/ Chuchiliga/ Tumu roads are also under construction.
From the foregoing, it is crystal clear that the NDC government has been just and fair to the people of Navrongo ,just as it has been to any other group in the Country ,as far as the distribution of the National cake is concerned.
In conclusion, with all these phenomenal achievements chalked by the NDC in Navrongo, why would Hon. Woyongo dole out money to influence voters ? In all the village to village campaign rallies we have embarked upon, it is the inhabitants themselves who came out to cite appreciatively all the projects the NDC has executed in their area. The NPP can therefore keep on crying Wolf where there is none and I can assure them that reality would dawn on them come 7 December when Ghana goes TOASO!