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Konkomba Youth Association has warned that ethnic consideration in the creation of new regions by the Akufo-Addo administration will spell doom for the entities.

The full text of a statement issued to that effect published below;

The Northern Region is the largest in Ghana with a total landmass of about 70,384 KM’ but unfortunately one of the least developed. Among the key reasons responsible for the underdevelopment of the region is the difficulty the regional capital (Tamale) faces in effectively reaching out to and cooperating with the various districts and municipal assemblies. Coupled with insufficient resources and remote locations of some of the districts and municipalities from Tamale, poverty and the high rate of illiteracy and ethnic conflicts have made the administration of the region more cumbersome.

Recently, various government agencies, Non-Government agencies, Non-Governmental organizations (NGO’s) and Student Unions contributed immensely in educating rural folks to educate their children formally. These campaigns have yielded wonderful results which have come with attendant challenges like the insufficient school infrastructure in many communities as well as the insufficiency of teaching and learning materials to match the increasing enrollments.

Here again various government and religious organizations and civil service groups have done a great deal though insufficient to address these challenges.

It is important to state at this point that contrary to the popular opinion among most Ghanaians that inhabitants of the Northern Region are from one tribe, there is huge ethnic diversity in the region. This perception to a large extent is due to the manner in which these ethnic groups have been able to coexist for decades despite few escalations of tensions in recent years.

This co-existence in the region has much to thank our founding fathers (e.g. Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah) for the manner in which they handled ethnicity and made everyone see themselves first as Ghanaians before any other identities. The boarding school system entrenched this nationalistic identity as students from various ethnic groups learned to co-exist peacefully in schools.

Not is not only this, a lot of government agencies, NGO’s Chiefs and various Ethnic Youth Association have worked tremendously hard to educate their tribesmen on the importance and advantages of living peacefully.