Stephen Yakubu (middle)
Upper East Regional Minister, Stephen Yakubu, has arrived in the Upper East Region to start work as the head of the region.
The usual triumphant procession that has characterized the arrival of regional ministers in the past was missing. He entered the Bolgatanga Municipality with the shortest convoy the municipality had ever witnessed in 12 years.
Another change is that the libation and other traditional rites to usher the minister into the region were not done at the entrance of the region (Pwalugu), rather they were done at Estate in Bolgatanga along the busy Bolgatanga-Tamale highway.
Some residents have shared varying views about the change; while some attributed it to the presence of COVID-19, others said, what happened in the past was a waste of time and resources, and the new regional minister might not be interested in such things.
At about 4:00pm on Sunday, March 14, the minister in the company of some New Patriotic Party Executives, the Bolgatanga MCE, Joseph Amiyuure, the NPP 2020 Parliamentary Candidate, Rex Asanga, the Regional Police Commander and others arrived at the place of the ritual where the Tindana and some traditional heads were waiting.
A cock and sheep were slaughtered and libation was poured; there were prayers for the ancestors of the region and God to protect the minister and people of the region from evil, and called for peace and prosperity.
The regional minister in an interview said the development of the region lay in the hands of residents in the region and all hands must be on deck to develop the various communities and districts.
“We need to develop our region; we are going to work towards solving them. We are going to look at them and grade them and see how we can handle them.”
He said “right now, our main issue is security because we have been having a lot of issues about security in the region, and I am going to engage the security services and we will see how we can reduce that so that everybody can go about doing their work in peace.”
FROM: Ebo Bruce-Quansah, Bolgatanga