Alhaji Mohammed Baba Alhassan and Aisha Salifu
President Akufo Addo has appointed a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and a Deputy CEO for the newly-created Zongo Development Fund (ZDF).
The appointment is another evidence of the President making good his promise of changing the lot of the Zongos in the country.
The CEO, Alhaji Mohammed Baba Alhassan aka Teacher, is a typical Zongo man. He is a darling of many parents, especially at Nima in Accra.
He has played invaluable roles in the education of many youths at Nima when he was headmaster of the Ghana Lebanon Islamic Senior High School (GLISS), a school established by members of the Islamic community, where he has been elevated to the status of a Director.
Being a professional graduate teacher, his insistence on discipline enabled him to have many products of GLISS, as the school is famously known in the Zongo community, to gain admission into both public and private senior high schools in the country. Already, some of them are pursuing programmes for higher degrees.
He vied for the East Ayawaso constituency seat on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in 2012 and has not relented in his contributions towards the fortunes of the party at Nima and beyond.
He had his first degree at the University of Cape Coast and holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration at the University of Ghana, Legon.
The deputy CEO, Aisha Salifu, is also a ‘Zongo girl’ born and bred in Accra. Being a product of Accra Girls’ Secondary School (now Accra Girls’ Senior High School), she understands the challenges of the Zongos, having been brought up in this deprived part of the country.
She is the daughter of the famous senior police officer, the late Chief Superintendent Salifu Dagarti, who laid down his life for the survival of Kwame Nkrumah during an assassination attempt on his life on 2nd January, 1964.
The Zongo Development Fund Bill coincidentally was signed into law by the President on 2nd January 2018 – the date her father was killed by an assassin.
She left her footprints in the Ghanaian community in the US, where she played a pivotal role in the affairs of the NPP in the diaspora.
She was an active member of the United African Congress in the US and worked at Stanford and Yale for many years.
Aisha lived in New York too and worked as a healthcare administrator, operating an active NGO simultaneously. Her father hailed from Ullo Tuopare in the Jirapa District of the Upper West Region.
What started as a manifesto entry, rubbished and described as a campaign talk, attracted the appropriate legislative touch when a Zongo Development Bill was signed on January 2nd 2018.
Hon. Boniface Abubakar Saddique is the Minister for Inner City and Zongo Development. The Ministry, with its full staff, is being housed at the Castle – former seat of government.
The Ministry has hit the ground running with an assortment of programmes, having left the drawing board and awaiting takeoff when its approved budgetary allocation becomes readily available.
By A.R. Gomda