|
| Letter from The President: Famine in the North? |
9/16/2005 |
|
Letter from The President: Famine in the North?
Countrymen and women, loyalists and opponents
I am writing to you from New York –the Big Apple. Am here to interact with other world leaders and just have a good time. I know am not an important world leader – I don’t have nuclear weapons and I don’t produce oil. So as far as this gathering is concerned, am quite insignificant. That’s why I have decided to enjoy this city as much as I can and meet many of the world’s most powerful leaders as well.
Since I arrived in New York, I’ve been eating good food and drinking good wine. But whenever I sit down to dine, I feel a sudden surge of guilt in my mind. It’s all because just a few days before I left Accra for New York, I read in the news that there was some sort of food crisis in the northern parts of Sikaman. It’s not fresh news anyway but it was shocking all the same. I first heard of the food shortage in the north early this year. At the time, I remember very well that the World Food Programme intervened and sent some grains there. I thought the situation had been resolved because for sometime I didn’t hear anything about people starving to death – until last week. I think I heard someone say that about 14 people died in one week in a certain village – apparently from starvation.
I have heard it been said that grains that were donated by the World Food Programme are being kept in stores as people starve to death. To make matters worse, government officials in the three northern regions seem unable to make up their minds as to whether the situation has reached a crisis point or not. This doesn’t surprise me at all. They are eating well. They can afford more than three square meals everyday for themselves, their families and their concubines. They can even afford ice cream and watermelons for desert. So they think all is well.
Some of the government officials in the north have even dared to suggest that the opposition MP who raised the alarm last week that people were starving to death was “doing politics” with the issue. I have a contrary opinion. I think that it is rather the government officials who are doing politics with the issue.
Their inability to make a firm determination as to whether or not the food shortage in the three northern regions has reached crisis point is a clear indication that someone is trying to cover something up. They don’t want to embarrass my government by agreeing to suggestions that a situation that could have been controlled easily has gotten out of hand and has assumed crisis dimensions. So they are trying to cover up. That’s why I am intervening and writing this letter – from New York.
I want the buck-passing (and the indecision) to stop immediately. We can’t play with people’s stomachs (and their lives) like that. The earlier we agreed that there is a problem in the north the better for us all. I think it makes better political sense to always accept that there is some sort of problem and tackle it head-on. So whether it’s a crisis or not doesn’t matter now. Even if the food shortage affects just a few hundred people, the right steps must be taken to help them out. I don’t know whether it is true that a quantity of grains has been locked up whiles people starve to death. I want the agric minister to immediately commission an inquiry into this. If it turns out that the allegation is false, we will boo the man who made it and we will all be happy it’s not true. But if it happens to be true, I’d like to see the face of the person who is callous enough to lock up grains he didn’t cultivate whiles people die. Let the investigations begin now, please. No time wasting will be entertained. I want to see a report on this matter on my desk by the time I arrive back in Accra.
Most important of all, I will like the ministers responsible for the three regions to immediately decide whether the problem is serious enough to be called a “crisis”. I want this determination to be made now before I leave New York. If you let me know early that there is a food crisis in the northern parts of Sikaman, I could slip it into one of my speeches (both to the other world leaders and to some other gatherings in New York) and, who knows, I might make CNN news. I have seen the draft of my speeches and I can tell you that they are so dull that they will even bore a lazy donkey to death. I believe that slipping a few words about the food situation in the north in my speeches will not only make them interesting but they will help attract world attention to the problem. And world attention is all we need to resolve the problem. Look at what happened when the world’s attention was focused on the food crisis in Niger. I heard that some citizens of Sikaman went on a hunger strike to raise money for them. We can do the same for our people and ask the rest of the world to support us, can’t we? I don’t want to miss this opportunity to talk to these leaders whiles they are in the mood to talk. So I need the three ministers to make a decision and inform me before this UN talkshop ends. This might even be the best time for us to resolve one of the biggest problems confronting agriculture in the north – irrigation. I know that we need efficient irrigation systems to boost food production in the north and end the excessive dependence on rainfall.
I need to get this matter off my conscience as soon as possible because I can’t enjoy the delicious variety of culinary delights in the Big Apple when my people are dying of starvation. And I don’t want to return to Sikaman a starving man either.
Excellently yours,
J. A. Fukuor
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
