Welcome, President John Dramani Mahama. The people of Upper West, Upper East and Northern Regions send you their heartfelt greetings. Indeed citizens of the entire Ghana send you their most excellent regards.
The people of northern Ghana are proud of you; they never thought after the overthrow of President Hilla Limann, one of them would ever become President of Ghana again.
The Sissala are particularly very happy that President Mahama who is a Gonja and a "play mate" to the Sissala has taken after late Alhaji Imoro Egala, one of Ghana's finest politicians after Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first President and Dr. Hilla Limann who opened the floodgate of the presidency to northerners.
Needless to say, the developmental challenges that confront President Mahama are enormous and he needs moral encourage and support from Ghanaians to enable him to deliver. The questions people of the north are asking are: Will President Mahama be able to take after Dr. Limann whose administration was clean with no dirt of corruption?
Dr. Limann and his People’s National Party (PNP) ministers never knew corruption, not even a messenger in the offices pilfered a pin. Will President Mahama be able to emulate him and maintain that fate and give more credit to northerners once again or will he endorse corruption by protecting his ministers and challenging all those who accuse them of corruption to bring evidence to prove their cases?
Will President Mahama be able to fight the "Corruption of Greed" among his ministers, metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives, who out of greed would want everything for themselves and nothing for Ghanaians? And how will he also fight "Corruption of Dishonesty" in his administration? The people of the north and indeed Ghanaians have witnessed past administrations whereby some ministers, out of dishonesty, used their positions to amass wealth and abuse the trust that the President have reposed in them. How will President Mahama deal with that canker and uphold the northerner accolade of truth and honesty?
And how will he deal with praise singers and liars who out of their selfish interests will be telling the President all manners of lies about others, vilifying others and trying to become "cotton and smoke" to his eyes and cloud his vision, as well as ward-off the good people of Ghana from the reach of the President.
These are some of the worries that many Ghanaians are anticipating to happen because they have seen all the harm liars and hero worshippers of former presidents have done to Ghana.
Many Ghanaians are looking forward to see how President Mahama will deal with such people since so much is really expected of him to transform the Ghanaian economy and redeem it of the corruption that has eaten deep into the fibre of the Ghanaian society. There is no doubt that President Mahama will live up to the accolade of a northerner, "known for his truth and honesty".
He should therefore make sure that those he will be appointing as ministers are the right persons to occupy the right positions, make sure that the metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives are not society offenders and ensure that government contracts and projects are equitably distributed.
The President should be more than prepared to fire his ministers who are engaged in corrupt practices to serve as a deterrent to others. And not only that, they must also be put on trial in the law courts to account for all monies spent. Liars and praise singers who would be parading the corridors of power should not be entertained because liars are murderers and care must be taken about their activities in the presidency.
Government anti-corruption agencies should be properly resourced to investigate issues pertaining to corruption while the media also play their watchdog role by guarding against the misuse of public finances entrusted in the care of government officials.
Above all, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) party executives and supporters in the regions must avoid greed in the sharing of contracts and citing of government development projects only in communities that voted for the NDC in the 2012 elections. They must also avoid acts that are likely to jeopardize the fortunes of the National Democratic Congress in the 2016 elections.