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Deputy Minister of Agriculture, William Quaittoo has recently come under intense fire over comments he made regarding farmers in northern Ghana.

The Deputy Minister is said to have referred to the people from the three northern regions as being difficult and insincere.

“If anybody who is in the north and said his farm was destroyed by fall armyworm the person must prove it. Our brothers (in the North) it is so difficult to deal with them. I lived there for 27 years, I speak Dagbani like a Dagomba and all that. They are very difficult people. Nobody can substantiate. If anybody says that his farm was destroyed by armyworm, the person would have to come and prove it. We have no records of that. It’s just a way of taking money from the government: that’s what they do all the time . . . ” he said.

Though Hon. Quaittoo has apologized for his distasteful remarks, it appears his apology is not enough for the issue to simmer down.

Speaking on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo', NDC Communicator, Bernard Anim Piesie lambasted the Deputy Agric Minister for "insulting" the northerners.

According to him, the Deputy Agric Minister's comments were unsavory and believed his comments were representative of the government's mindset about the farmers in the north.

Anim Piesie called on President Akufo-Addo to condemn the unsavory comments that have become a character trait of his appointees.

He sought to remind the government that the people they're insulting were the electorates that cast their votes for them to come into power and so deserve respect from the government appointees.

“It’s not because people didn’t have anything better to do and that’s why they went to stand in the sun to cast their votes. If someone asks you a question and your response is to insult, then it becomes difficult. Some comments by the Deputy Ministers are not just right,” he said.

In a related development, the Minority in Parliament has also condemned the Deputy Agric Minister describing his comments as ethnocentric, unjustifiable and unacceptable".

In a statement issued by the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, the minority stated emphatically that it's "unjustifiable and unacceptable that the Deputy Minister would label the entire people of the three Northern Regions who he says he has lived with for 27 years, as unreasonable people, accomplished and persistent liars, people with a high propensity for perpetrating fraud, people who all the time use these fraudulent acts to steal money from the state" and so are calling on President Akufo-Addo to "fire him immediately as a mark of his revulsion against this unprovoked and reckless ethnocentric bigotry against the entire people of the three Northern Regions".