It has come to my knowledge that a certain two-faced write- up captioned WHY MARK OWEN WOYONGO MUST GIVE WAY is being circulated by some faceless people with the intention of denting or assassinating the impeccable reputation of Hon. Mark Owen Woyongo – the most effective and efficient MP in the annals of Navrongo.
Permit me to state clearly that the write- up in question has no name of author and it has been deliberately designed to give the erroneous impression to the public of emanating from a press conference held at FEINA by some aggrieved NDC members in the constituency.
Permit me to state unambiguously that there is no infighting or any intramural conflict among NDC members in the Navrongo Central Constituency. Neither are there factions nor issues that can destabilize the equilibrium of the NDC in the Constituency. There is a great sense of camaraderie among us.
In a futile attempt to give the publication a semblance of believability , the cowardly nameless author deliberately used a fake NDC letterhead as if a Party’s letterhead could be used by any member of the Party.
Allow me to aver emphatically again that there is no strand ,shred or scintilla of truth in the wild claims made in that apology of a press statement: I can vouch that there is absolute peace,tranquility and unity among the NDC fraternity in the Navrongo Central Constituency .And, in fact ,there has never been a more united NDC !
I can comfortably put this unity down to the charisma and inimitable leadership skills of the MP. Woyongo ,to all intents and purposes, is a linchpin of unity in the Constituency.
I would also like to state without mincing words that virtually all the claims made in that anonymous publication fly in the face of the truth.
Our surveillance and reconnoitering has however revealed that Mr Weguri Joseph Pwawuvi, the PNC Parliamentary Candidate, is the culprit or as it were mastermind behind this sinister attempt to do the reputation of the Hon MP in.
This was the same inferior communist tactic he employed after falling out of favour from the Rawlings revolution when charges of corruption and financial impropriety were levelled against him. It was his hobbyhorse or if you like modus operandi to sneak stealthily into peoples residents to drop anti-revolution literature . Is that what you were taught in Bulgaria as a Cadre of the revolution?
In fact, one of his paid agents was caught red handed in his distribution sprees and he confessed to being asked to distribute the junk by Weguri Joseph !
I must add that under President Mahama’s dispensation freedom of expression is guaranteed but it becomes highly suspicious and disturbing when it is done abusively through mendacious write ups smuggled into peoples houses under the oblivion of darkness.
Now, at this juncture , it is crucial that i respond to the medley of falsehoods , fabrications and downright lies perpetrated by Mr Joseph Weguri in his one man “press conference” – regardless of the cowardly circumstances surrounding the said “press statement”.
For starters, he tells the convoluted tale that Hon. Mark Woyongo is one of the notorious absentees in Parliament without deigning to avert his mind to the fact that as a Minister of State, Woyongo could be saddled with other assignments of State that may from time to time preclude him from showing up in Parliament. Mr Weguri Pwawuvi Joseph is also oblivious of the fact that the potency and effectiveness of a Parliamentarian does not depend on the number of times one hollers, rants and raves on the floor of Parliament but on the lobbying acumen , clout and dexterity of the MP.
In fact, I prefer a taciturn Parliamentarian who brings development to his Constituency to the “sound and fury” of a garrulous parliamentarian who brings nothing to his people. Woyongo is of course the former. So your argument that he is incompetent simply because he doesn’t speak on the floor of Parliament is pointless. On the contrary, he does speaks when it is necessary .You can call it strategic silence if you like.
Yes, it is true that honourable Woyongo often comes home to his people unlike your pay master Hon. Kofi Adda who used to come home only during the election year. This should not surprise you because Woyongo is a man of the people and for that matter he is not of the stock of politicians who despise ,shun or desert their own People. He has fellow feelings and empathy for them! The MP for Navrongo Central and Minister of State at the Presidency, Hon Mark Woyongo ,has also set the bar notches higher indeed by being the first MP in Navrongo’s history to have a locatable office in the Constituency. Therefore, Weguri shouldn’t be discombobulated by Woyongo’s frequent visitations home.
Is it not risible that Mr Weguri Pwawuvi thinks it is anathema for a Minister to delegate his subordinate to answer questions on his behalf? If he is quick to write this away as incompetence ,then what is the rationale behind appointing deputies? Are they not supposed to stand in when the minister has too much in his hands? For your information, before his deputy can appear on the floor of Parliament to answer questions on his behalf , Hon. Woyongo must have briefed him of the right responses.
Mr Weguri Joseph Pwawuvi also makes the false and mischievous claim that the boreholes project was not initiated by Hon. Woyongo. According to him ” the boreholes projects were initiated by the Community Water and Sanitation Agency,the National Security Service as well as the Turkish Government through an NGO “. What a mouthful!
This disingenuous attempt to disown our assiduous MP, Mark Woyongo, of the 132 boreholes he has installed in pursuit of his 2012 Campaign promise to the people of Navrongo, to me ,is tantamount to day light political robbery!
Mr Weguri Joseph upon realizing that this lie was likely not to wash with the people, since everyone is aware that Woyongo was the initiator of the boreholes ,changed gears to a different tangent.
Hear him, “granted that he has a hand in getting them to Navrongo, Mark cannot continue to deceive us with boreholes which have no pump heads”. This man is a bundle of contradictions! Mark has never pretended that all the boreholes had pump heads . Very few of them certainly do not have and Woyongo has already given the villages in which those ones are found the assurance that their pump heads would be fixed. If Woyongo has been able to drill for water, which is the most expensive aspect of a borehole then why won’t he provide pump heads for them? The drilling to locate Water and the pump heads, which one is more expensive and laborious.
He further makes the concocted ,puerile and cooked up accusation that those boreholes that have water have high mineral levels. This is nitpicking!
My candid opinion is that Mr Weguri has a very low opinion of the people of Navrongo indeed to think that they would fall for these naked lies and infantile propaganda.
In truth, these blatant and unalloyed untruths by Weguri ,which are intended to throw dust into the eyes of the people of Navrongo are indeed an affront to their intelligence and sensibilities. The inference one can draw from the flimsy and erroneous argumentation of Joseph Weguri is that none of the 132 boreholes installed by Hon. Mark Woyongo is of benefit to the people! In effect they are all white Elephants. We shall see on the 7 of December!
Moreover , Mr Joseph Weguri also makes the unfounded and baseless claim that he initiated the Navrongo Urban Water rehabilitation Project. Perhaps his understanding of initiation is quite different from ours .But ,Let me assert with all the emphasis at my command that there is no modicum of truth in that claim . This is a palpable lie. The Navrongo Urban Water and Rehabilitation project is the brain child of the NDC government. It is part and parcel of a general and well-thought through government policy to meet the Water needs or demands of urbanization and the growing urban population. Therefore the presence of the 8.5 million dollar Urban water project is a result of the relentless efforts , lobbying genius,influence and the hard work of Hon Mark Woyongo .But for his instrumentality this project could have gone elsewhere.
Mr Weguri Joseph also wanted to know, in his solo “press conference”, the efforts Woyongo was making towards providing a library facility for the people of Navrongo. For his illumination ,Education is one area the MP is so very passionate about. That explains why he has invested so much time ,resources and effort in ameliorating the educational standards of the people of Navrongo to the extent that he built the our ladies of lourdes Girls Senior High school at Gaani from scratch in order to improve the lot of the girl child. The first step Hon. Mark Woyongo took in his bid to provide a Library facility for Navrongo was to seek the green light from Hon. Kofi Adda to allow him to erect a Library facility on the Land Kofi Adda had acquired opposite the WAR Memorial Hospital for the same purpose when he was an MP but Kofi declined.
The directive principles of state policy enjoins succeeding governments to continue with projects started off by the previous ones. It is in the spirit of this constitutional declaration that Woyongo was poised to continue with this Library project but in spite of this Hon. Kofi would not budge. He prefers the hole he had dug which has become a breeding ground for mosquitoes that torment the entire neighborhood to allowing Woyongo to take the credit for building it. That notwithstanding, Hon Woyongo is scouting for a suitable land and location to put up one since a library cannot be positioned far off from the reach of the people.
Of all the accusations levelled against Hon Woyongo by Weguri Joseph, the one which sounds most outlandish and ludicrous is his attempt to belittle or denigrate the support and assistance Woyongo has been rendering to the youth of this Constituency. Weguri, in his haste to lampoon or berate our hardworking MP for not doing anything to improve the predicament of the youth has forgotten that Navrongo is a close knit community and for that matter we are privy to the fact that a huge number of our brothers and sisters have been conscripted into the various security apparatus thanks to Hon. Mark Woyongo.. If push comes to shove, I can personally name hundreds, with the inclusion of the youth and employment programme. But our humble and modest MP, would never attempt to prove to you Weguri by name those he has helped as you demanded.
I am also quite flabbergasted by the fact that Weguri ,who claims he wants to go to parliament, is at his wits end regarding the state of the MP common fund and other related funds. This shows a clear lack of concern for the welfare of the people. Let me see how I can help him out of the abyss of ignorance. There was a board that was publicly inaugurated and put in charge of the disbursement of the MP common fund.
In fact ,Woyongo had no hand in selecting the beneficiaries. It is with his common fund that several students, some of whom i know, were able to pay their school fees. Since you have deliberately failed to remove the scales from your eyes, the honour is mine to fill you in on another use of those funds. The MOCK Exams written by the BECE candidates have been funded for the past years by Woyongo’s common fund to boot!
Under Woyongo and the social democratic government of the NDC for that matter the physically challenged and the indigent have not been left out in the lurch . Several support systems and interventions have been extended to them. Thanks to the MP’s common fund many who have lost their limbs were given prosthesis limbs.
Mr Weguri Pwawuvi also tries vainly to portray Mark Woyongo as a leader who is indifferent to issues concerning the Constituency. He is quick to cite the Mortuary,maternal health and the X ray department as examples of that negligence. Nothing could be further from the truth! Every soul in this constituency apart from Weguri and his ilk is aware of the fact that at a point in time the Mortuary could not admit any Corpse because all its Freezers were defective or faulty. It was through the magnanimity of Hon. Woyongo that the Mortuary came back to life. He had to replenish it with new freezers from his own resources.
I know Mr Weguri Joseph did not do his homework well else he wouldn’t have waded into issues of maternal health. Hon. Mark Woyongo’s government has not only reduced maternal mortality but has built an ultra modern Maternity Ward at the WAR Memorial Hospital to ease the travails of our womenfolk and it has the capacity of attending to eight births at a time .
In conclusion, i am perfectly aware of the fact that there is a grand scheme by the NPP and of course the PNC Parliamentary Candidate to ran a smear Campaign on Hon. Woyongo. In a meeting they held at Vunania , they agreed that due to the enormity of the projects executed by Hon. Woyongo and the NDC, it would be impossible to unseat both Mahama and Woyongo in Navrongo if they ran an issue based campaign. Against this backdrop, they have therefore resolved to embark on a campaign of lies and deceit!