Social indiscipline in every society takes on the magnitude, corresponding to the level of the discipline of the leadership—CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO
I have to repeat myself, my dear reader, that barren minds experience famine on fertile lands while fertile minds turn rocky lands into bountiful agriculture lands to feed themselves. It seems we have had barren minds governing this country for the last eight years. In their view, nothing good capable of improving the lives of the majority of the people can be done. It began with the Northern Development Authority (NDA) espoused by Nana Akufo Addo in the year 2008. When portions of their barren mind became fertile, they re-christened the NDA to SADA and messed it up by stealing the funds allocated to it. Since they appropriated the funds allocated to SADA, no further budgetary allocations to SADA had been made.
Then came the free Senior High School (SHS) education programme by Nana Akufo Addo in the year 2012, once again, the barren minds downgraded it citing failures in other jurisdictions on the African continent. The thinking behind the free SHS is the simple fact that the minimum qualification in Ghana today to enter any public institution, job offering in whatever form is the WASSCE. The minimum qualification to enter some educational institutions in my generation was the Middle School Leaving Certificate (MSLC).
My class mates who could not make it to the secondary schools after middle school at the time, could go to Teacher Training Colleges, Nursing Training Colleges and other related public educational institutions, including the Polytechnics. Entry into the Police Service, the Armed Forces and other allied institutions required a minimum of MSLC.  Over time, the WASSCE has become the minimum qualification to enter any of the above stated public institutions and many more. It just makes sense that in order not to cut so many people out of such opportunities, the nation makes SHS the basic cut off point in this country.
When some reason found its way into the barricaded barren minds, they pledged to offer some free SHS education which was supposed to have begun this academic year. Ghanaians are the best judges. Failure galore in that regard as well. Fast forward to the year 2016, Nana Akufo Addo promises one dam, one village for agricultural purposes in the three northern regions as well as offering US1million or its equivalent for each of the 275 constituencies throughout the country, once again the barren minds say it is not possible.
In the year 2001, at an MMDCEs conference in Accra, we were told that the HIPC initiative was going to bring in so much money which will help improve the poor social infrastructure in our various Districts. My humble-self wrote to the late Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu the then Minister for Local Government, suggesting that those benefits should be brought down to the districts instead of planning and executing the projects from the centre. The government did that and the District Assemblies were given monies periodically to embark upon development projects in the four key areas of education, health, water and sanitation.
To distinguish those projects from the normal District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF), a symbol was put on all such HIPIC funded projects. The Districts or the Constituencies of this country are very much challenged in terms of basic infrastructure for everyday lives. With the HIPIC reliefs, the funds were disbursed to District Assemblies. There were 110 MMDAs in the country with 200 constituencies. What that means is that those MMDAs with more than one constituency were not fairly treated compared to those with one constituency each at the time because we were initially given the same amount of money, the number of constituencies notwithstanding.
Today, the nation has 216 MMDAs and 275 constituencies, should the funds be distributed along district lines, almost 60 constituencies would be ‘left out’. Major basic challenges of water and roads in most of the nation’s constituencies are seen on the screens of televisions every day. Minor bridges linking one community to the other in many parts of our rural constituencies have their activities challenged on a daily basis because vehicular transportation is hindered because of broken linkages.
In some cases, such bridges require a few hundreds of thousand cedis to address them, sadly, those communities look up to Accra or as they say ‘aban’ or government to fix those challenges for them.  An amount of US1 million or GH¢4 million per year to a constituency in Ghana, well managed for four years continuous, will bring massive development to the constituencies. Indeed, the needs of constituencies differ. In the urban constituencies, sanitation management may constitute the major challenge to the people. Drains and gutters in poor communities within such constituencies can be fixed without having to wait for the central government.
In rural communities, major roads in terrible conditions can be shaped and bridges and culverts constructed to deal with such challenges that hamper their activities. The Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP) as found in the NPP’s Manifesto is a major decentralization of development budget which will be managed by the various legal bodies in relation to key challenges affecting them. The Assembly members and the Members of Parliament would choose projects within the constituencies, forward them to the Development Authorities for approval and execution.
In my view, there should not even be a need for another bureaucratic body to supervise the disbursement and execution of those projects, the MMDAs, with proper and effective supervision and monitoring, can manage them. In this way, the citizenry would not always look up to distant Accra for basic solutions to their problems.
The establishment of the Zongo Development Fund (ZDF) which has been misinterpreted to mean building skyscrapers by the barren minds who think nothing good can be done for the very constituencies they have exploited for political gains all these years, is so symptomatic of the deceptive nature of the NDC. What are the predominant differences between other communities and the Zongo communities in this country? Simply the communities are largely unplanned, they have no roads let alone talk of good ones, no drainage systems, no gutters, no open spaces in the main, hospitals and clinics are far and in between, secular educational infrastructure do not exist in many instances.
All the funds are aimed at is to provide such basic things like roads within the communities, and if that requires pulling down some buildings and paying compensation, constructing drains and gutters so that waste water can run in organized manner, toilets can either be built in the homes because there will be opportunities dislodge them when full, or public ones built in designated areas for the mass of the people. Schools can be built, clinics and hospitals would then be built as well.
Many of our young Zongo residents have no formal education, nor vocational and technical training to equip them to make reasonable life and living. Having left them in that economically powerless state, some politicians then go to them and get them to do some dirty work for political gains, using their unrefined energies. A Zongo Development fund, appropriately targeted, with the inputs of the people themselves will certainly improve the communities as well as the people themselves.
Our fellow citizens living in the Zongo communities are human beings who also want to live comfortably as any other group of people the world over. They do not cherish the filth that engulf them, they are not happy with the floods that harass them every rainy season, they do not relish in seeing their waste water living with them, the mosquitoes that kill their children on a daily basis are things they do not like just as any other group of people. They also want to live decent respectable lives; the Zongo Development Fund will help offer that.
These are possible, but can only be done by fertile minds who think about others, people who respect others no matter their backgrounds and circumstances in life, leaders who believe that the only way to harness the human resources of a nation, is to offer reasonable opportunities to all for the greater good of our nation. That is the dream of Nana Addo Danquah Akufo Addo.
Daavi, give me three tots.