I had the displeasure of reading Ex-WO1 Bright Segbefia’s attempt to write his own opinion on happenings in the downstream of the Volta River, but choose to present it as a rejoinder to my opinion, The Volta Lake and Issues, which appeared last Monday, in The Chronicle.
In the first place I will advise Bright to take a study on communication and rejoinders, because he simply does not understand what a rejoinder is. A rejoinder is a response directly to all or most of the things put up by someone else. Picking one or two of what I wrote on October 23, 2023 he used them to write his own story and called it a rejoinder.
If anyone who had earlier not read my opinion, and read what Bright put up, they will think I put up those infantile issues and Bright was only taking me on.
Bright, started boldly by stating that, some misleading feature articles (some anonymous and erroneous radio talks have come up during the disaster that was unleashing on the Tongus in the Lower Volta Basin…. Hedishonestly and deliberately failed to name his sources, because he had none.
But down in his submission, he challenged me to name communities, VRA gave early warnings to, as I stated in my opinion. My source was VRA, if he has problems, he should take VRA onand not me.
Respectfully, I know more about the Volta River, Volta Lake and the Volta Basin than Bright does. How can he impute that Tongu is the Lower Volta Basin? Or is he grammatically challenged to have written that, the buffer basin does not affect the Lower Volta Basin or Tongu. Let me educate him on the Volta Basin.
The Volta Basin covers an area of over 400,000 square kilometers. 43% of the basin lies in Burkina Faso; 40% lies in Ghana; 4% lies in Mali; 4% lies in Togo and Benin and 3% lies in Cote d’Ivoire.If the basin begins from Bamba in Mali and ends at Ada in Ghana, we will havea distance of about 1,100 km as the crow flies. And if the basin is split only in two, Upper Basin and Lower Basin, then Ghana forms part of the Lower Volta Basin.
If, however, the basin is split into Upper, Middle and Lower Basins, then the Lower Volta Basin in Ghana, will begin from the north of the Volta Lake, down to the south and this will mean that over three quarters of Ghana will be in the Lower Volta Basin. The buffer zones were to protect the waterbody all along the basin. The Lower Volta Basin is different from the Lower Volta (river).
This is the eleventh spillage after the dam was constructed. In 1991 during Rawlings’ PNDC era, and in 2010 during the NDC era, there were spillages and yet no one thought it was necessary to have buffer zonescreated to absorb the flood waters.
And mind you, sea erosions affected Keta for centuries until NPP constructed sea defense wall during Kufuor’s first term in office. During the construction of the Keta Sea Defense wall, people were re-located from their ancestral homes to a modern township in Vodza. How about that? Was is wrong for that to have been done?
The July 1995 floods were about what happened in Accra, when after nine hours of rain all the natural drainages overflowed their banks and greatly flooded the surrounding with forty deaths recorded.
That is what I am talking about. Even though Ghana Metrological Services informed government about the heavy downpour and floods, it failed to take the necessary action to save lives. Jerry Rawlings did nothing and people perished. Nothing was done to check this in the future and in June 1997 another flood struck.
After the June 2001 floods, Kufuor constructed the Alajo storm drain and that reduced the effects of flooding in and around the Odor River.
In the case on hand now, with the magnitude of the floods, if the people had not heeded to early warnings from VRA and others, lots of lives would have been lost.
This is the difference.
Apart from commenting on my suggestion of buffer-zones and the fact that people on social media were making unsavoury comments, Bright kept spewing unnecessary things in his rejoinder to make it seem as if he was responding to me, even as I never made any such related comments.
For one thing, I know I have a fan in Bright Segbefia, but unfortunately, he seems not to understand what he reads in my articles and he is failing to admit his ignorance.
Whatever I wrote in that opinion never showed that I directly or indirectly attacked those victims of the floods. Ex-WO1 Bright Segbefia, should not spread falsehood. If he has problems, I will advise him to give my articles to at least five well-educated and broadminded people to read and explain the issues to him.
His last sentence which he said, ‘but my advice to Mr Dugan and his ilk is that they should not rub salt in our malignant sores,’ clearly defines his character as a decorated ignoramus who chooses to celebrate his ignorance with pomp and pageantry and only ends up deceiving the vulnerable along the way.
Reading my article, where did I blame any of those affected by the floods for bringing this upon themselves? I never blame any community for locating in the buffer-zones. I only said even though this idea of buffer-zones was right, leadership was not interested.
And here leadership meant the government of the day, because with flooding during and after the construction of the dam and its adverse effect on the communities, downstream, something should have done. Why the buffer-zones were not considered in the sixties is anybody’s guess.
During Kufuor’s administration, I think some people who settled in areas very closed to the Lake were evacuated, but the NDC came and reinstated them, how about that?
I suggested the setting up of buffer-zones and Bright has problems with that. Assuming the buffer-zones were already there, homes would not have been flooded and people would not have been displaced. I also suggested the constructions of dams and underground reservoirs to harvest excess water for future use, and this Bright had not read?
Bright came out with the recommendation on dredging the river and that is how he sees the solution to the problem. I will not attack him on that except to remind him that apart from the cost, the silt would be dumped on the shores of the waterbodies and the communities bordering them. Where would the silt go when it rains? Has he ever thought of that?
Bright’s tribal bigotry is very alarming and it rather insults the good standards of the Ewe people. Why should he condemn the theme, da woho so, which was used for the simulation exercise? If he is complaining the Akan should not be used, then why should it be Ewe? Mind you the Dangmes also share the Lower Volta (river) with the Ewe, Tongus, so why Ewe and not Dangme?
Can Bright go along and condemn Christian worshippers in Ewe communities who sing Akan songs of praise and worship to God? And is he aware that an Ewe musician composed the second national anthem, Yen Ara Asaase Ni, in Akan? Can he stand up and condemn Ephriam Amu for not using Ewe lyrics? This childish tribalism of his must cease, or he should start speaking and writing only in Ewe to all Ewes and non-Ewes alike and I will consider him a man of his word.
Exhibiting how tribalistic he is, Bright is complaining about students from Tongu communities bordering the Lower Volta not benefiting from VRA Scholarships; wards of cocoa farmers in the Tongu area not benefiting from the CMB scholarship andTongu communities just a few meters from the Volta River do not have pipe borne water and have always relied on raw river water which gives them water borne diseases.
Is Bright saying that these unfortunate incidents affect only Ewes. To begin with, how large was the size of cocoa farms in the Tognu area? What was the percentage output compared to cocoa producing areas in Akan lands or even in the Guan section of the then Volta region?
All across the cocoa growing areas in Ghana, most wards of cocoa farmers did not benefit from CMB scholarships. And this started during the first republic under Dr. Nkrumah. So, he cannot just talk about Tongu without considering Ghana in general. Only someone who is very tribalistic would be saying this.
This also applies to award of VRA scholarships and mind you, the VRA does not benefit from Tongu area because it is downstream.
Power generation is sourced from the lake and not downstream in the south, so if Bright wants to say because the river passes through Tongu, VRA has a responsibility to supply power to communities there, he will lose this argument. Waste water from the dams passes through Tognu. And by the way how many communities along the lake directly benefit from electricity?
Will this ethnocentric bigot called Bright Segbefia stop these unholy comments?
I repeat that in my opinion which appeared in the Chronicle on Monday October 23, 2023, I never attacked the flood victims but rather sympathised with them. I only attacked media practitioners who made it seem that it was the state machinery’s fault to have created the floods.
Either Bright Segbefia does not understand what I write, so he has vowed to attack me on any comments I make about the Volta Region or he is not good in English and would attack anything without reasoning.
Hon Daniel Dugan.
