YENDI,Gbewaa Royal Palace, Northern Ghana,11th July 2023.
Read by Zangbalun Naa Dr Yakubu Il
(Chief of Zangbalun Traditional Area.)
Good morning everyone. It’s a great pleasure to see our Honorable Defense Minister, The National Security Minister, our Hon. Regional Minister and all honorable members of your entourage here in my Palace today. I welcome you heartily to the Gbewaa Palace and Dagbon as a whole.
The importance of your visit is not lost on us and you couldn’t have come at a more opportune time to the Gbewaa Palace amidst the rumors of imminent war that has plagued the region for a couple of weeks now.
These rumors that are being peddled through social media have intensified and become ugly as the perpetrators add their spin to them. This has made it difficult for the people in the region to go about their normal duties at home and in the farms.
And as you are aware we are in the peak of the farming season and almost all of us are engaged in the fields.
It has gotten to the extent of peddling lies about attacks that do not exist. And one of such cases, that you are all aware of by now, got residents from Sunson, two days ago, fleeing at mid night to Yendi for protection. I personally sent my emissaries to find out and it turned out to be a false alarm.
The rumors have gotten students fleeing from school and workers leaving their places of work and you know what will become of their future. You guess is as good as mine.
Not the Dagombas nor the Konkombas are happy about what is happening. Nobody needs a war. A war in which there would be no winners. We will all be the losers.
Dagbon and the Northern Region are for us all, those who hail from the region and those from other regions and living with us. We make no distinction among them.
So it behoves on all of us to protect the region and ensure its development for the complete eradication of poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, maternal and child mortality. These are our real enemies.
We need to direct our strengths and resources towards these real enemies so that we create the jobs our youth lacks for fulfilling livelihoods.
Though we cannot downplay the importance of this meeting but it would have been totally uncalled for if we did what we promised to do.
We and the Hon. Defense Minister and most have tread this path before and resolved to take certain actions. Including the apprehension of the certain persons operating the social media handles spewing out hate speech.
We reneged on our promise and considered our previous meeting a thing of ridicule.
That is why we are where we are today. Now we are back to square to engage in another round of rhetoric.
What will make this meeting different from the previous one? What are our intentions behind the rhetoric? How far do we want to go to ensure peaceful coexistence in our region? How far do we intend to go to ensure that our children complete their education and get employed in a developing region?
These are some of questions I need answer to. Convince me and the people of Dagbon and the Northern Region.
Anyway as traditional leaders of this region, our main duty and responsibility is to ensure the security and safety of our people and to continuously strive for the environment that will enhance the development of the region.
Anything shon of this makes us unworthy of holding ourselves as leaders of our people.
All said and done I thank you all for making it to my Palace today.
May Allah SWT bless Dagbon.
Allah bless the Northern Region
And Allah bless our homeland Ghana.
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