Open letter to Dr Bawumia: Chairman Samba is enemy to NPP's Break the Eight agenda, call him to order

Dear Vice President Dr Bawumia,

We are members of the Concerned Youth, a coalition of NPP youth groups based in Tamale. We have taken the pain to write to you today to point to you some actions of our regional Chairman that have the tendency to undermine your effort to become the next flagbearer of our great party. Your Excellency, Chairman Mohammed Adam Samba’s attitude left unchecked may undermine also our party resolve to break the eight at the next General elections.

Mr. Vice President, we will start by listing a few of many projects which have been awarded as contracts to Chairman Samba but have been abandoned or half executed and way behind the stipulated time of completion. Some of such projects are the Nanton District Assembly Office complex, Zogbeli inner-city roads, Sagnarigu-Kpene road which he forcefully took from Yellow Man, UDS Nyankpala campus to Gbullung road, Chereponi inner-city roads, Bimbilla-Chamba road are just but few of his abandoned or half-completed projects.

Your Excellency, this attitude of Chairman Samba abandoning contracts which mobilizations have been paid is detrimental to our break the eight campaign.

Residents of the aforementioned communities in which these abandoned or half-completed projects are located are irritated by Chairman Samba’s behaviour and recent events at Zogbeli, a Tamale suburb is a clear example.

The crux of the matter, your Excellency, is that the Chairman’s reckless attitude is making himself, you and the NPP unpopular in the Northern regions as the general believe is that you are the one shielding him from this indiscipline he is perpetuating.

Mr Vice President, we know that it is not true that you are protecting the Chairman but the reality is that this belief if left to fester in the minds of people for so long has enormous potential of affecting your presidential ambition and the chances of the party in 2024 for there is an old Dagbani adage that says that the neck is not exempted from being smeared with blood when the head it carries is injured.

That is why we are calling by this letter to call him to order and to as a matter of urgency get back to site and complete every single project awarded him as a contractor. Even though we do not care about his diminishing popularity but we care about yours and that our great party.

Your Excellency, the Zogbeli inner city roads which were supposed to finish before 2020 elections are almost a year beyond the scheduled completion date and have become a tag of war between chairman Samba and residents of Zogbeli. If a proper report was to be carried on Zogbeli, one will have discovered an increase in malaria cases due to stagnant water in the shoddily constructed gutters by Chairman Samba. If care is not taking opposing factions (supporters of Samba and those opposed to the shoddy work he is doing) will clash one day and put one of the areas in Tamale that remained loyal to the Danquah-Busia-Dombo tradition in perpetual political upheaval.

Your Excellency, the Nanton District Assembly which was awarded to Chairman Samba at the same time as the Bolgatanga East Assembly complex is now half a year beyond its completion date. Whilst the Bolgatanga East assembly building was completed in time and has since been commissioned for use by your boss, H. E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo in sometime June this year. The Nanton District Assembly workers are struggling for space to operate while the Chairman is busy sharing funds that could have been use to complete the project to praise singers and surrogates.

Mr Vice President, we will like that you send a fact-finding team to check the state of all these projects that we have mentioned and report back to you. Also, let this delegation find out how these abandoned projects affected the party's chances in these communities in the 2020 election and how more they will affect the party in the 2024 election. We have no doubt that the conclusion they will come to is that Chairman Samba has done the NPP a great disservice by abandoning this plethora of projects.

Your Excellency, another issue that we want to draw your attention to before we tell you how violent Chairman Samba has become is the recent asphalting of roads in Tamale Metropolis. It is a fact that H. E. Nana Addo's government has performed marvelously with your help when it comes to road infrastructures in the country.

It is again a fact that the government's "YEAR OF ROADS" which we believed has ended benefited a lot of communities across the northern regions but the same cannot be said of NPP strongholds in the Tamale metropolis such as Zogbeli, Aboabo and Lamakara.

Your Excellency, none of the existing inner-city roads of these NPP's strongholds in the metropolis benefited from this asphalting even though these areas were earmarked initially as beneficiaries. Your Excellency, less than 30 percent of Lamakara inner city roads are tarred. What crime have we committed such that our areas are exempted from this important intervention? Your Excellency, we put this before your doorsteps for your kind consideration.

Mr. Vice President, Chairman Samba has become a wild political beast that no one can criticize as he will readily unleash his thugs on party activists who hold different views to his. This, we believe will spell doom for the party as we will not stop criticizing him and his conduct as long as he remains our party’s regional Chairman.

Your Excellency, we will not be able to write much on this issue but we entreat you to enquire from party elders in the northern region, his plans to destabilize the party in the region through violent tendencies are apparent.

To conclude your Excellency, we wish to reiterate that you instruct Chairman Samba to complete all contracts awarded to him to avert the tug of war we are currently witnessing in Zogbeli from happening in other places.

Your Excellency, a party is as good as the people who have been elected to man its affairs but for us here in the Northern Region, our chairman increasingly bad conduct continue to make our party a laughing stock and our opponents in the NDC continue to capitalise on his inefficiencies to sell the bad name of the NPP to electorates.

Sincerely Yours,
Napadow Clifford Atchulo
(Secretary Concerned Youth Groups-NPP-NR)