Sometimes I think, and cry loud to the wilderness with no help or solution. At other times I ask, ‘why am I Northerner?’ Out of pain but should that be the case? People who attend the same school, Meet at the same market square for trade, break calabashes under the same tree, play ball on the same park, attend funerals together and yet we can kill our next door neighbor like a Christmas fowl?.
The youth of Northern Ghana, our future is not in the hands of any politician who can promise but cannot deliver, our future lies in how we use our minds and hands. Whether AZOKA BOYS or KANDAHA BOYS, KUSASI or MAMPRUSI, ABUDU or ANDANI we must not forget that we are first human beings before our tribal and cultural differences. Our unique culture is one that teaches humility, Peace and hospitality to the extent that a visitor in a northern home is respected than the last born child, so where did my generation learn this attitude of violence from? Or could it be poverty? Hmmmmmmh but could a hungry man fight? Won’t he rather look for food? Or it is because we want to turn chiefs in order to dominate over the other tribes and rule a divided people?
However, while we wait for these answers the politician can’t be left out of the people to blame, the northern elite who goes round the whole world receiving awards yet made those wealth and fame from the little resources meant for their own people, could this be a betrayal? Or it is just simply a matter of greed? While all these are issues to address let us not take it out of context.
What of the journalist who sit in Accra, compromise his/her professionalism and exaggerate and hype any little spark that happen in the three Northern regions which might have not been heard by the nearest village in that so called ‘conflict zone’. I have had ladies who turned me down because I said I was a northerner, some of my northern brothers have loss interviews because they bear Northern names.
My people why are we creating this notch for ourselves? With all these we have northerners who are in higher and influential positions in government, corporate Ghana and the academia in this country who can eat and go to bed and sleep with a sound mind without helping look at the problem. If everybody was sleeping should we be sleeping? Should we be sleeping when our house is on fire?
But, all is not lost a generation of northern youth is coming, who will not tolerate corruption in any form, who will not tolerate any violence and shall not take nor make unnecessary excuses, we shall make our people reason with the world and turn the fortunes of Northern Land around, We Shall Write the Good Stories of Northern Ghana and We Shall tell Our Own Story the way it must be told.
KNOCKING ON YOUR DOORS, NORTHERN YOUTH.
By:A PROUD NORTHERNER
AYILU, RAYMOND KWOJORI
RESEARCH ASSISTANT, FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, UCC
[email protected]
0240383605
