Madam Ama Benyiwa-Doe is the latest government official to join the list of the blacklisted. Some top officials of the Central region branch of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) have petitioned the President to, as a matter of urgency, remove Benyiwa-Doe as the Central Regional Minister.
But, Benyiwa Doe would not sit idle, for her adversaries to destroy her. She has replied to the allegations to the presidency stating that her accusers are the very people who, on the quiet, are opposed to her appointment as the central regional minister.
Although the President had wanted to reshuffle her to Accra as the Women and Children’s Affairs Minister, the latest agitation is stalling the reshuffle, lest it is construed as being influenced by the marauding NDC protestors.
The Today newspaper gathered that the President was advised by top party hierarchy members to bring Benyiwa-Doe to shore up the panel image of the NDC on radio discussions, particularly to offer a stiff challenge to NPP’s Ursula Owusu. Nonetheless, the picketing NDC officials argued that the lady minister is carving a niche as perhaps the most inefficient lead government representative of all time in the President’s home region.
The NDC agitators are said to be backed by a leading party official who has developed the guts of saying it as it is the NDC way and has been a regular feature on many discussion programmes in the capital.
The official was the lead communication person of the NDC in the run-up to the 2008 general election and information emanating from the presidency suggests that he has personally gone to the President to push for the sacking of Benyiwa-Doe, but the President, sources at the presidency indicated, diplomatically warded him off.
Benyiwa-Doe’s sins as catalogued in a memorandum to the presidency stated clearly that the only growing forte of the regional minister has been her penchant to grace funerals and festivals in the region. “Benyiwa-Doe will definitely cause the fall of the NDC in the Central region if the President does not change her. She is only interested in her well-being and has consistently ignored the party structure in the region in decision-making processes,” one of the agitating NDC officials disclosed to the Today newspaper.
With some regional ministers teaming up with their Districts Chief Executives (DCEs) to facilitate development projects in their regions, the official alleged that “Benyiwa-Doe does not even meet central regional DCEs on how to get most of the projects in the region going or completed.”
Although the official would not be too involved in the fact that Benyiwa-Doe has put up a mansion in her Gomoa East home town, he nonetheless believed the building is creating discomfort amongst NDC functionaries and activists because “Benyiwa-Doe seems to be too consumed in amassing personal wealth at the expense of the total development of the Central region.” ‘Today’s findings, however, suggest that the geo-political dichotomy of the central region might have also conspired against the tenure of Benyiwa-Doe’s stewardship.
Aside from the allegations, which the paper could not confirm immediately, the fact that Benyiwa-Doe is from rural Central region is indeed working against the lady minister. It has almost become an unwritten norm for most central regional ministers to have come from coastal parts of the Central region.
Benyiwa-Doe hails from the Dahom on the Gomoa East of the Central region, where most coastal inhabitants of the region look at her with some degree of scorn.
A similar fate befell Isaac Eduasor Edumadzie, who for the most parts of the Kufuor administration, served as the Central Regional Minster.
Edumadzie is an indigene of Ajumako in the Central region – an area also considered as under-developed by coastal Fantes. The same fate is playing against Benyiwa-Doe.
Source: Today