Edmond Gyebi
18 July 2007
Tamale — THE NORTHERN Region Assembly Women Caucus on Good Governance (NORWAGG) has censured the government to live up to its promise of promoting good governance and make it more practical.
According to NORWAGG, it was fairly "unwise and unacceptable" for government to claim glory on good governance, when women who constituted majority of Ghana's population were sidelined and less represented in governance or national decision-making processes.
Speaking at the close of a three day advocacy, capacity and confidence building workshop on good governance organized by the Northern Sector Action on Awareness Centre (NORSAAC) in Tamale recently, the President of NORWAGG, Madam Haruna Alijata said Ghana would have an unconvincing or flimsy future if women were continuously plunged overboard.
She therefore called on government to adopt a well-biased means to balance the protracted disparity between males and females at all sectors of the economy for an accelerated national development.
The workshop, which brought together over 63 Assemblywomen from the various District Assemblies in the Northern Region, was solely sponsored by Ibis Ghana, an NGO operating in the Northern part of Ghana to improving women access to education and social justice. Ibis Ghana is also into helping women up North to identifying their rights and responsibilities, advocating for their rights, empowering them to be self-dependent and also improving their participation in governance.
Madam Alijata, who encouraged her colleague Assemblywomen in the Region to aspire higher national positions, declared NORWAGG's readiness to support any well-behaved female parliamentary candidate to clinch power in the forthcoming 2008 election.
"We must prove to the whole world that women are equally or more competent than men and by so doing, we must desist from backbiting and help ourselves in any battle that involves a woman and a man. We must match them boot-for-boot, but with due diligence and respect. We shouldn't insult or disrespect men because may be we are fighting for a position, NO! - That will not speak well of us as honourable women," the NORWAGG President remarked.
However, the Associate Director of the Northern Sector Action on Awareness Centre (NORSAAC), Mr. Mohammed Alhassan Awal, who strongly seconded the speech by the NORWAGG President, commended Ibis Ghana for championing women cause in the North.
He also thanked Action Aid Ghana International and management of NORSAAC whom he noted were the main brain behind the formation of the Northern Region Assembly Women Caucus on Good Governance.
Though Mr. Awal commended the ruling government for attaching importance to issues affecting women in Ghana, he rejected the government's claim of promoting good governance, which he said had not reached its required peak.
Meanwhile, NORSAAC and its partners became the main sponsors of most aspiring assembly women in the last District Assembly and Unit Committee level elections, which enabled as many as 72 Assemblywomen to enter the various Assemblies in the Region.
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