Parliament’s Committee on Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs is expected to visit various sites in the Northern Region where the government says it has built or is building dams as part of the One village-One dam policy.

The move, according to the Vice Chairman of the committee, Abraham Odoom, will enable the members to verify the claims and counter-claims.

The move comes after former president John Mahama, on his recent tour to the Northern Region, questioned the whereabouts of the dams.

Addressing delegates of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) at Wechiau in the Wa West constituency as part of his three-day campaign tour of the Upper West Region, Mr Mahama noted that the government is rather providing dugouts for the people, instead of the dams.

He further pointed out that the dugouts had always existed in the savanna area, with the NDC government digging many for the people.

He said during his tour of Mamprusi West as part of his Northern regional campaign tour, he saw the first experimental work of the one village and one dam, and that work cannot be described as a dam.

“Before the election, I asked them, are you talking of dugouts or irrigation dams but they refused to answer. Apparently, they were thinking of dugouts”, he said. Mr Mahama said under the Ghana Social Opportunities Project, the NDC government did many of the dugouts and rehabilitated older ones to support rural farmers undertake dry season farming to improve food security in the region.

“So, it is nothing new, and the one village, one dam, really, there was nothing in it. It is one village, one dugout and even the dugouts where is it? The dugouts are not even there”.


In a response, Deputy Information Minister, Pious Enam Hadzide claimed the government has constructed 116 dams out of the 570 it intends to build.

In an interview with Class News, Mr Odoom said the committee will tour the north to ascertain things for themselves.

He said: “The committee of Agriculture, we are going to go around very soon. In a recent briefing that we had with the Special Project Initiative Minister, Madam Hawa Koomson, she came to parliament to brief us and she told us about a number of dams constructed… She said they’ve started, so, we are going to go round to do a verification.

“As the Minister of Information is saying, he relies on information from the technical ministries, once he is saying it, we take it that it’s true. As for the former president [John Mahama], he is doing his campaign, we should all understand that he is not visiting sites, he’s visiting his delegates, so, it’s likely he cannot see the dams, so, the former president should save us all these, he can also give us evidence of where he has gone [and saw no dam].”