By J.A. Sarbah
In the heat of the 2024 campaign, then-candidate John Dramani Mahama (now President) promised the people of Bawku a new administrative region — to be carved from the Upper East — with Bawku as its capital. It wasn’t a development plan. It was a political trap.
The unspoken aim was loaded with meaning: to legitimize the Kusasi claim to the Bawku skin and displace the Mamprusi traditional authority. It was a promise not rooted in national interest or constitutional process, but in ethnic appeasement for electoral gain.
And it worked. The Kusaug voted overwhelmingly for the NDC. All six seats in the area — swept. Fifteen out of fifteen in the Upper East — captured. But now, months into Mahama’s presidency, the region has not materialized, the tensions have worsened, and the promise has evaporated like campaign dust.
The Constitution speaks plainly. Ghana’s 1992 Constitution, under Article 5, provides a lawful process for creating regions. It demands broad-based consultations, a referendum, and a clear development rationale — not tribal arithmetic whispered on campaign platforms.
Compare this to the legitimate creation of Oti, North East, Savannah, and others — born out of genuine calls for decentralization, not power games between feuding gates.
What Mahama proposed was not only reckless — it was a breach of trust, provocative and a dangerous flirtation with ethno-political engineering. He knew the tension. He knew the cost. Yet he lit the match, then walked away – because to him, an Entitled-Second-Term mattered more than human lives!
Now, Bawku burns again. And the region that was promised? A mirage.
A leader who campaigns on peace must not rule by silence. And a promise made in conflict must not be abandoned in comfort.
Ghana cannot afford leaders who trade geography for loyalty and gamble with blood for votes.
J.A. Sarbah
PP Firebrand | Voice of National Conscience
