BRIDGING NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE

The University for Development Studies (UDS) has initiated a series of programmes to engage the leaders of the political parties seeking the mandate of the people to outline their development strategies for northern Ghana.
It is a commendable effort for the UDS to move beyond its core functions of teaching and learning to invite the leadership of the political parties to state, in clear terms, the programmes they have in order to turn around the fortunes of the people of the three northern regions.
Since independence, the country has tried, without success, to bridge the development gap between the north and the south.
The first President of Ghana, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, introduced far-reaching measures such as the free education for children of northern extraction as a pragmatic and progressive move to empower them to compete on the job market.
Before the government introduced this policy, the northern sector was considered to be the supplier of cheap labour on cocoa farms and those from the north did other menial jobs in the south.
Through the free education policy of the First Republic, northern Ghana can today boast some of the best-educated people occupying very responsible and sensitive positions in the country.
However, the development challenge of the north appears to be assuming seeming insurmountable dimensions, with most communities being afflicted by conflict and diseases, while poverty levels are continually growing.
The DAILY GRAPHIC believes that we have allowed the problems to fester for far too long, instead of looking at them as challenges that require our collective efforts to surmount to attain a middle-income status by 2015.
We are not oblivious to the establishment of the Northern Development Fund to serve as a catalyst to address the falling standards of living among our brothers and sisters in the north.
Unfortunately, the kind of resources needed to change the fortunes of the people in the north cannot be left for the fund to source.
What is needed is a concerted national resolve, perhaps along the lines of the Common Fund and the GETFund, to compel our legislators to set aside a certain percentage of national revenue to help bridge the development gap between the north and the south.
The DAILY GRAPHIC is aware that some areas in the south are equally deprived like the north, but, by and large, the south is better developed than the north.
We cannot pat ourselves on the back for championing good governance when the populace in a section of the country feels that it has been marginalised. Good governance is also about the equitable allocation and management of the country’s resources.
Some countries on the continent are in flames and struggling to rebuild from the ashes of war because of conflict arising out of the uneven allocation of resources.
The UDS platform for presidential candidates should provide us with the opportunity to get various blueprints for resolving the problem so that the next government can harmonise those visions to bridge the north and south dichotomy once and for all.
Let us adopt a bipartisan approach to the development challenges in the north so that everybody will feel free to volunteer ideas to remedy the problem.
However, we urge our brothers and sisters in the north to turn their back on conflicts and give peace a chance because development activities cannot take place in conflict-prone communities.