The demand for Volta Region’s Independence: Failure of the State or just a lawless group?

Eritrea split from Ethiopia in 1993. South Sudan also gained their independence from Sudan in July 2011. Biafrans want their independence from Nigeria and recently the people of Volta region are also demanding their independence from modern day Ghana.

The State of Ghana should not be arresting them. Instead, the State should be in dialogue with the members of the Homeland Study Group Foundation (HSGF) and should also go back to the policy room to reassess how she allocated her developmental projects over the last decades.

Take a drive outside Accra and you would begin to wonder if you are still in Ghana. Even the road to Obuasi where our gold is mined, is totally deplorable.

The State cannot concentrate all her developmental and major projects into one region and call it the Capital city and expect people in other regions to keep traveling miles to the capital to fully access these facilities. The demands by the HSGF for Volta region’s independence may sound like a joke to many Ghanaians and policymakers but in the next decades, many other regions or groups may follow suit if the State doesn’t reassess its way of allocating developmental projects.

A person in Donkorkrom in the Eastern region should not have to travel to Korle-bu to perform a surgery.

There should be a hospital of equal quality like Korle-bu in the Afram Plains district. A person in Tepa in the Ahafo Ano North in the Ashanti region, should not have to travel to Accra to stay three months to receive a passport.

He should be able to go to his district capital and get his passport processed for him within a day or week.

The State should release the members of HSGF and consider redesigning its priorities to focus more on decentralization and shift away from wasting her resources on its officialdom.

Only effective decentralization of developmental projects and other facilities can prevent other regions or groups from coming out to demand their freedom from modern day Ghana in future.

Dr. Sa-ad Iddrisu

(Email: s.iddrisu@yahoo.com)