Youth Urged To Resist Political Violence

The Coordinator of the Tamale Ecclesiastical Province Pastoral Conference (TEPPCON), Ms Agnes Gandaa has called on the youth to reject politician who instigate them to engage in violence before, during or after the December general elections. She observed that some politicians and opinion leaders who ought to be counselling the youth against violence were fuelling conflicts and unrest in parts of the country. "They are not in for your good, they are only after their selfish gains, don't have anything to do with them," she said. Ms Gandaa made the call on Monday at a two-day workshop for the youth in Bimbilla in the Nanumba North District under the theme: "Challenges of Development - The role of the youth". The TEPPCON and the Konard Adenauer Foundation (KAS), organized the workshop to sensitise the youth to reflect on the bad influence of some politicians and opinion leaders. Ms Gandaa said the time had come for every community to discuss, analyse and speak against such leaders no matter what they offered them with. "Such leaders remain the beneficiaries of conflicts and unfortunately, they don't have any feeling of regret", she said. She noted that since the youth and women were in the majority, they could always change the political orientation and the socio-political conditions of the nation by critically assessing political candidates and their capabilities. She urged the youth to be concerned with the development of their communities and hold their leaders accountable as that was the only way to prevent such leaders from taking them for granted. Ms Gandaa commended the government for the National Youth Employment Programme and appealed to it to help structure the allowances of the beneficiaries of the programme to enable them to contribute to the social security scheme. Mr Salifu Saeed, the Nanumba North District Chief Executive, bemoaned the huge expenditure on security personnel maintaining peace in the district as a result of conflict. He said such expenditure could have been used for development projects such as education, agriculture, health and transportation. He therefore called on the youth to refrain from activities that could bring conflicts to the area. The DCE appealed to the Northern Regional Council of Chiefs to help expedite the resolution of existing chieftaincy disputes in the district. He commended the Catholic Church for the numerous development projects it had initiated in the district, saying: "Most of the good educational institutions in the district were built by the church". Mr. Saeed said out of the six school children, who accompanied President John Agyekum Kufuor to the World Food Programme forum in Rome, Italy recently, three of them were selected from the district and were pupils of Our Lady of Peace Junior High School at Bimbilla.