Enough Of Your Cacophony, Dr Yao Graham

Over the past many years, you have taken undue advantage of the ignorance of the people of Ada and have played on their vulnerability to your advantage. We have listened to you and watched your activities with your ‘third world network’, and have noted with keen observation how you made the people believe you were their saviour.

Your third world network was with the likes of Radio Ada fighting for investiture in the Songor lagoon telling the whole world how the practices at the time were destroying the lagoon. That was the genesis of ‘yikatseme’ in Ada whose primary agenda was to rise against the ‘atsiakpo’ system being operated by a few advantaged people to the detriment of the larger population.

The ‘atsiakpo’ is the creation of miniature pans in and around the Lagoon’ for salt production, a system which has destroyed the natural salt base of the Lagoon. Because the salt base was destroyed, those operators resorted to laying trampoline in the lagoon to hasten the salt formation process making the final salt dangerous for human consumption. Also, they dug wells in the Lagoon to get water for their illicit activities which became a death trap for anyone working in and around the Lagoon.

Your actions were even compounded when you organized a press conference at the Accra Press Center without the knowledge of DISEC, both Ada East and West and the Traditional Council, and other leaders of the land. Declaring insecurity in Ada was the aim of the conference.

Only for the ‘Astiakpo’ operators to return from that press conference and go straight to the company’s concession to attack their fellow Adali and burnt down the company’s site offices.

Successive governments have failed to implement what you called the ‘master plan’. But did you care to interrogate whether that plan was the saviour for the people of Ada? Today, your actions and inactions have brought a new wave of indiscipline on the land of Ada where subjects do not have respect for their elders. People go and sit on radio Ada and insult with impunity the highest authority of Ada land drawing energy from your disposition.

The violence you spoke about in Ada emanated from your show of blatant disrespect to the traditional leaders, including the paramountcy when you told the people that the traditional authority does not have any power to invite or punish their excesses.

What is happening in the Songor Lagoon as we speak is a revolution that will transform the whole of Ada and Ghana as a country.

ln less than two years of the takeover by Electrochem Ghana Limited, a lot has gone into the level of development that has taken place including bringing back the natural state of the Lagoon. Constant sea water in the lagoon, something which was not the case in the last 40 years. The transformation is mind-blowing, and instead of synergizing our energies to promote the gains, the likes of you are always finding ways to draw Ada back to the dark days of anti-development. That is what you turn around to refer to as ‘deprivation of livelihood’.

Who would have thought that in two years a company which is still operating at a developing stage would give out GHc3m to the women of Ada at a time the whole country is going through economic turmoil? Do you how much this meant to the women in terms of bringing life into their businesses?