Upper East Region, Ghana
Dear President John Dramani Mahama,
You will be here this Thursday and Friday. You will step onto our soil, shake our hands, and perhaps smile for the cameras. But before you arrive, there are things that must be said—loudly, clearly, and without apology.I am not an enemy.
I am a believer. From the very first day I was old enough to vote, I have carried the torch for the JDM project. Not because my family bleeds NDC. Not because it is politically convenient. But because I looked at your vision for Ghana and saw myself in it.
I saw my people in it.That is why this letter is not written in anger. It is written in love—and in the painful honesty that love sometimes demandsFIRST, THE CREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE Mr. President, before the hard questions, let us say thank you.
You have lifted sons and daughters of the Upper East into positions of real power and influence. That is not a small thing in a country where the North has historically been fed crumbs from the national table.
You have shown that talent from our region can sit at the highest levels of government—and that matters.To those appointees who are using their offices to open doors for others, who are visible in our communities, who remember that they serve the people and not just the President—we see you, and we applaud you.
You are proof that representation, when wielded with humility, can transform lives. Do not stop.But let this also be said: not everyone at the table is eating with clean hands. And not everyone who was given a seat has remembered who pulled the chair out for them.
1. EDUCATION: THE ONLY LADDER WE HAVEMr. President, do you want a legacy in the Upper East that outlives your presidency? Then build us institutions that future generations will name after you.We are tired of being the region that sends its brightest children south to chase education.
We are tired of watching parts of our own Ghana get a world-class STEM schools while our children study under trees.
We are tired of seeing PRESEC Legon flourish while our schools crumble. We deserve nursing colleges. We deserve teacher training colleges. We deserve universities for agriculture, engineering, and the sciences.
I am only comfortable today because education lifted me out of poverty. A sharp boy from Zuarungu does not become Attorney-General by luck. He ( Dr. Dominic Ayine ) got there through doors that education opened.
As the late Vice-President Aliu Mahama warned us: the solution to conflict in the North is education, and our biggest enemies are ignorance and poverty.Those words are not poetry. They are prophecy. And they are still waiting to be fulfilled.
2. THE BOLGA–BAWKU ROAD: A PROMISE STILL UNPAIDMr. President, this road is not just asphalt. It is a contract between you and the people.You made a pledge. You stood before the Bawku Naba in 2013 and promised that on your next visit, you would drive on a well-paved road to the Samanpiid Festival. That promise died in the dust.
By the end of your first term, a Brazilian contractor was finally on site. Then you handed over power, and the work slowed to a crawl. Now you are back—nearly two years into your second term—and that road is still a death trap. It is not even part of your flagship #BigPush projects.
If care is not taken, Mr. President, you will leave office, and that road will remain exactly what it is today: a broken promise.
3. SADA IS DEAD. POVERTY IS NOT.You and the late President Mills gave us SADA—a bold, beautiful idea to lift the savannah belt out of poverty. Yes, our own people failed you. Yes, corruption and incompetence strangled it. But now, in your new administration, the entire vision appears to have been buried with it.
Poverty in the North is not a talking point. It is a daily emergency. The gap between the North and the South is not closing—it is a canyon. Mr. President, revive this fight through the Northern Development Authority (NDA). Do not let the savannah become a graveyard of good intentions.
4. TO YOUR APPOINTEES: STOP EATING THE FUTUREA final word, not to you, but through you.Tell your appointees from this region to look beyond their stomachs. Tell them to incubate the next generation of leaders instead of suffocating them.
Many have grown arrogant, selfish, and deaf to the cries of the very people who campaigned for them.At some point, Mr. President, this must be said to their faces. That point is now.
TWO YEARS DOWN. TWO TO GO.Mr. President, we are at the halfway mark of your four-year term. The clock is not your friend.We do not want to hear “we are planning.” We do not want to hear “we were doing.” We want to hear: “We have broken ground.” We want to hear: “This is what we have built in Upper East.”Because when you finally say goodbye to power, history will not remember your intentions. It will remember your impact.
Do not let us remember you as the President who planned.Let us remember you as the President who delivered.God bless you.
By Adekurah Wisdom.
An ardent believer, a fellow countryman, and a son of the Upper East Region.