Accra: The Youth Placement for Employability Solutions (Y-PES) Ghana has empowered traditional leaders in the Wala Traditional Area to enable them to leverage their offices and influence to facilitate and spearhead development in their respective jurisdictions. The engagement, which brought together Divisional Chiefs in the area, was also to empower them with the needed knowledge to lead based on contemporary leadership needs and skills.
According to Ghana News Agency, Mr. Sulemana Mumuni, the Executive Director of Y-PES Ghana, addressed the participants, stating that traditional leaders were active agents of community development and empowerment, which necessitated the need to build their capacities to lead in the development of the region. He urged the chiefs to respect and uphold the sanctity and authority of the offices they occupied, while leveraging opportunities to drive meaningful change in their traditional areas since defective leadership would affect the youth’s development.
Mr. Mumuni expressed the hope that the training would enable the traditional leaders to integrate their development policies and priorities with government structures in their traditional areas. ‘It is my hope that this engagement will help you to come out with a roadmap that will be a long-term strategic plan to guide you with concrete plans for the development of the traditional area. We also believe that as Divisional Chiefs, you will be able to drive development in the traditional area through effective dialogue and collaboration amongst yourselves,’ he added.
Mr. Mumuni explained that when traditional leaders were empowered to understand the sanctity and power of the offices they occupied, it would enable them to harness that power to engender development of their people. He appealed to the chiefs to shun partisan politics, unite, and work together towards a common goal, holding government appointees accountable in their traditional areas.
He also encouraged all traditional leaders to develop long-term development plans for their traditional areas to properly channel development interventions in their communities to address the needs of their people. The Executive Director also appealed to the traditional leaders to support Y-PES Ghana to impact the lives of people in the region and beyond, especially the youth.
Jinpenhi Naa, Naa Kadri Ibrahim, the Secretary to the Overlord of the Wa Naa, Naa Fuseini Seidu Pelpuo IV, expressed gratitude to Y-PES Ghana for the initiative to build the capacity of traditional leaders to lead development in their communities. He appealed to the organisation to sustain the initiative to empower traditional leaders to drive development, not only within their localities, but the region.