A few months ago, a medical doctor at the Upper West Regional Hospital reportedly expressed concern about the high number of kidney-related cases, particularly among people from the Nandom area.
Against this background, reports that a political aspirant seeking to become Member of Parliament for the Nandom Constituency is allegedly providing delegates with a bottle of alcohol of their choice every Sunday through selected drinking spots deserve public scrutiny.
If these reports are accurate, what kind of political culture are we building in Nandom?
Alcohol consumption, particularly excessive drinking, poses public health and road safety concerns. With drinking spots dotted across the municipality and road traffic accidents remaining a concern, we must question the wisdom of making alcohol a recurring feature of political engagement.
This is not an attack on drinking-spot operators, whose businesses provide livelihoods.The concern is whether political actors should encourage a practice that may normalise harmful drinking while competing for political loyalty.
Among the delegates are women, traders, farmers, parents and community leaders. Sunday is also Nandom’s major market day. Imagine the potential risks when alcohol consumption intersects with market activities, motorbike riding and household responsibilities. These are concerns worth discussing, not outcomes we should assume will happen to every beneficiary.
Another danger of such campaign strategy is the social cost to marriages. Imagine a husband sitting at home on Sunday after church and a wife leaves him to go for the sponsored weekly one bottle of alcohol, and returns home to “war”. There is already a reported case of an angry husband charging at the wife after she returned home from the sponsored one bottle last Sunday. He queried how such a policy was beneficial to the family, when they had better need for money, especially for the education of their children? Good question.
But the bigger question is sustainability.
How long can a weekly beer-distribution arrangement continue? What lasting benefit does it offer the constituency? What happens after the primaries, especially when that aspirant loses?
A bottle of beer is consumed within a short time. The resources spent on recurring distributions could potentially support educational assistance, youth skills training, community health programmes or road safety education.
Our delegates deserve more than recurring gifts. They deserve aspirants who can articulate credible plans for healthcare, agriculture, education, employment and sustainable development.
If the reported arrangement exists, (and our source is credible), we call on every Nandome anywhere and everywhere, to condemn it, for its retrogressive nature, and to let delegates and party foot soldiers in their communities, know,that, that political figure doesn’t wish them well. Most probably, that Aspirant is self-developing and thinks that foot soldiers should spend their lives on alcohol.
Nandom must not allow political competition to overshadow the welfare of its people.
A bottle may offer temporary satisfaction, but it cannot replace a credible development agenda.
Nandom deserves a conversation that puts public health, responsible leadership and sustainable development first.
By Mohammed Abdulai, Journalist and Teacher
