Let’s give NPP candidate for Wa Central Hajia Humu the chance this time around – Regional Minister
Hon. Stephen Yakubu, the Upper West Regional Minister is making a strong case for Wa Central constituents to give their nod to Hajia Humu Awudu – New Patriotic Party’s Parliamentary Candidate for Wa Central – to represent them in Parliament this time around.
According to him, it was time the Constituency brave the odds and taste a different individual to see what she is capable of bringing to the table.
The philanthropic politician will be giving the seat a second shot after failing to wrest it from the hands of the incumbent MP – Dr. Rashid Hassan Pelpuo – on her first attempt during the 2020 elections with a margin of about 6,000 votes.
He made the passionate appeal to chiefs and traditional leaders during a familiarization tour of the Guli Naa Palace and Busah Chief Palace respectively, emphasizing the importance of voting overwhelmingly for the two-time parliamentary candidate, Hajia Humu Awudu, to bring about a paradigm shift in the development derive of the constituency.
Likening the difficulty in determining the output between one’s children when only one is the person working on the father’s farm all the time without giving the other any opportunity to serve as well, he argued that:
“This one will go to the farm and weed small and you can again give the same to another of your son’s to weed. As they do that, you will see that the farm will finish very quickly because they’re competing. But if you have one of your sons to be going to the farm all the time, how will you know the other son’s capacity? This is why, His Majesty, Mba Naa, it’s important that this time around, to also try your daughter (Hajia Humu Awudu). Try your daughter and see whether she’ll be able to do better.”
The Minister emphasized that the tendency to have a sitting MP sleep on the job much to the detriment of the constituents, is very high, since the person would be rest assured of always retaining the seat as it’s a safe one for the person’s political party due to the voting pattern of the people, whether the person is delivering or otherwise.
“In doing so, there’s going to be competition. The other person will say okay, this time there is change. Because there’s change, I’ll have to work harder. If I don’t work harder, they’ll change me. If I know that you are not going to change me, why should I work harder? I’ll just continue doing things the way I do things because I know that I’ll always get what I want (win the elections),” he further appealed to constituents through the traditional leaders.
He urged the Chiefs and residents of Wa Central in the Upper West Region alike to support the New Patriotic Party candidate, Hon. Hajia Humu Awudu, in the upcoming 2024 general election.
Hon. Stephen Yakubu further advised residents of the region and other regions of the north against pledging a greater chunk of their allegiance to only one of the major political party all the time since that is counter-productive to their development.
He lamented that the practice of regions of the North putting all their eggs in one basket is a regressive move that often deprives them of a fair share of the national cake.
He said: “One of the things, critical things that I have seen is about we sometimes strategically not drawing those two major political parties closer to us and using whatever resources they control to develop ourselves. So if you look at it, we usually would put all our eggs in one basket and be carrying and when that basket, someone trips over, the eggs go down and break.
“It’s about the control of resources so if that’s true, then it’s always better to devide ourselves so that 50% (of the voters) will be here (in one major political party), another 50% will also be here. So that all the time, we can have part of the resources to develop our regions.”
He added that the failure of Northerners to observe such a strategy is the reason why sometimes it is difficult for them to benefit from the national cake which is controlled by a particular party in power.
By Ibrahim Wangara
