The people of Buipe traditional area in central Gonja district of the northern region over the weekend celebrated the 2014 Damba festival in a spectacular style amidst praises from stakeholders in peace building.
The Festival over the years has been celebrated on different grounds by the people in Buipe. But a colorful ceremony to climax this year’s Damba festival at Buipe, the Buipewura, Abdulai Jinapor the second described it as a moment worth celebrating and stock taking of the past years and a year of many resolutions for the future.
A lecturer of the University of Education Winneba and Spokesperson for Buipewura, Dr Ahmed Jinapor said the about one year chieftaincy dispute in the area is now a thing of the past.
The 2014 Damba festival marks the fifth anniversary since Buipewura ascended to the Buipe skins, the spokes person disclosed.
This year marks the fifth anniversary of his ascension to the Buipe skin moreover this year Damba marks the 1st anniversary of a Damba where all the chiefs, stakeholders and people of Buipe are behind him and actively participating in the celebration of Damba festival.
The 2014 Damba festival was on the theme; ’Peace, reconciliation and togetherness’ among all the people of Buipe. The Buipewura also used the occasion to emphasize his irrevocable commitment to sustaining peace that exists in Buipe and also asked all and sundry to join him in the emblem ’No more boundary or division among the people of Buipe can ever exist and accumulate all of them’.
The Buipewura thanked the president, John Dramani Mahama for his extra ordinary personal involvement in the restoration of the peace and tranquility that exist in Buipe and also thanked the overlord of Gonjaland , Yogbon wura Bornasa for his enormous contribution towards today’s peace. He did not mince words by commending the ever courageous chiefs and queen mothers, royals and most importantly the youth of Buipe and expressed the hope that next year they will be able to meet more united and developmentally-oriented people.
Explaining the historic Damba festival to Zaa News, Dr Ahmed Jinapor said the Buipewura is committed in the development of the area and that an educational fund has been established with seed money of 5 hundred thousand Ghana cedis.
He said the peaceful co-existence in Buipea does not only always bring the people of Buipe together but it also ensures sustainable development. Looking at the development that will benefit the people, that is why it has not been up to one year when the Buipewura resolved the chieftaincy case that existed within the people of Buipe.
The Buipewura set up a development fund with the seed money already loaded into the account and the committee managing it have started working.
The spokesperson said the Buipewura was putting up a number of classroom blocks for the Buipe vocational institute because he understands the relevance of vocational education to the development to the people of Buipe.
The Buipewura, according to Dr Ahmed, believes that when there are education, peace, unity and more importantly reconciliation there can be development and has tasked the committee that is responsible for the development fund to specifically put up dormitory blocks for the Buipe vocational institute to finish it latest by next year.
Unlike other development project whereby a person makes a pledge but not able to fulfill it, Dr Ahmed stated that Buipewura has personally contributed substantial amount of money into the fund and hopes that with the next year Damba, the people of Buipe at least should move a step further than where they are this year.
On the performance of the students in the northern region last year, Dr Ahmed Jinapor blamed the situation on policy makers’ inability to come out with a conceptual frame work in the educational sector of the country.
He attributed the whole problem with their educational sector to Ghanaians haven’t, as a people, come to the conclusion as to what kind of educational agenda they want to pursue. When he means by what kind of educational agenda, he refers to all governments who come into power being interested in only putting up classrooms blocks and which as a matter of fact is something that they always want to achieve and for them it is the determination factor of their success.
Dr Ahmed said the chief strongly believes that they need to have a conceptual frame work of what kind of educational project the people want. In the Buipe primary school he claims are heaps of chairs under trees beaten by rain, meanwhile within the central Gonja district they have schools that do not have chairs, so as a people they need to be serious and more or less try to practicalize what they espouse. Vocational education over the world he explained has been seen as one of the best means of educating people, but here in this country (Ghana) vocational education is seen as a stigma if somebody is doing a vocational programme that person is seen as a someone who is not intelligent, because consciously or unconsciously people who go through vocational education are not given the best of jobs, everybody wants the best of job and by the best of job it means someone that goes through literacy education and can wear a tie, wear a suit is the best.
so the reason why in northern Ghana such a big a problem exists is because of our economic disadvantage; northern Ghana is overly disadvantaged but when they take education as a whole in this country it is a serious problem that is why as a nation we are not developing because they haven’t seriously thought through the educational system, what kind of educational program do they want to have, what do they want to achieve as a nation within the next fifteen or twenty years.
As a matter of fact where they want to go should be propelled by their educational agenda, where they want to go as a nation if they want to become a technologically advanced country or a country that is specialized in medicine or human resource that as a matter of fact should be determined by their educational agenda.
Dr Ahmed, therefore, he strongly believes that something should be done about the educational problem. Kwame Nkrumah fought for independence with the thought that the Africans should be educated in a way that reflects in their thinking that addresses African problems.
Nkrumah, again, harbored the thought about establishing Kwame Nkrumah science and technology to deal with issues pertaining to Africa but unfortunately somewhere along the line his vision was left in the doldrums. As Africans, if our leaders do not start thinking of using the opportunity they have, especially when it comes to the educational agenda, then posterity will not forgive them.
By;Ibrahim Dikunyalala/zaaradio.com
Categories:
