�Lalasulala� Mode Of Financing SADA Disappointing � Dr. Bawumia

The Running Mate to Nana Addo �Dankwah Akufo-Addo for the December elections, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has described the funding model currently supporting the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), as a �Lalasulala model� and observed that such a model would not yield the necessary and urgent developmental results for the North. Dr. Bawumia was speaking at Nayanyiri in the Lawra-Nandom constituency of the Northern Region, during a tour of the constituency with his Presidential candidate. According to the NPP Running mate �in 2008 when Nana Akufo-Addo promised to institute the Northern Development Fund, the NDC ridiculed it and later copied it blindly. They promised in their manifesto to set it up with a seed capital of GH� 200 million and an annual installment of GH� 100 million. Three and half years down the line SADA should have had GHC 600million but they have failed woefully to fulfill these pledges� Dr. Bawumia stated that for the gap between the North and South to be bridged and for the North to witness the desired transformation, it is important that SADA be sufficiently resourced to undertake its mandate. �The current mode of financing SADA can best be described as a Lalasulala financing model as it depends on the whims of donors and cannot yield anything close to accelerated development. SADA needs to be fully, planned, and costed with dedicated and predictable financing secured to make it work. Otherwise it would continue to fail like we are witnessing,� he added. He was amazed at how the NDC administration claimed to have secured a GHC 100 million for SADA few months ago but had failed to pay it into the SADA account because according to the NDC, SADA ostensibly has no plan to spend that GHC100 million. Dr. Bawumia stated that the NDC is only paying lip service to the idea of accelerated development of the North and questioned how SADA could not have a plan to spend GHC 100million after three and a half years of governance and asked, �what is accelerated about this SADA?� Dr. Bawumia noted that the implementation of SADA had become adhoc. He observed that the NDC government for propaganda purposes was now very desperate to show success thus finding ways of somehow linking any project in the north to SADA. He pointed to the recent distribution of a 100 tractors as a case in point with regards to the desperate attempts of the government to link everything happening in the North to SADA and asked how the distribution of the tractors fit into the overall plan if the plan does not yet exist.