The Dagbon Youth Association, DAYA, Congress has been scheduled for tomorrow Saturday (June 4, 2022) in Tamale in the northern region.
The Congress would witness the participation of Dagbon Chiefs, Sons and Daughters of the land across Ghana and the diaspora.
DAYA has been an age-old mouthpiece of Dagbon Youth but activities of the association got halted during the chieftaincy stalemate in the ancient traditional kingdom.
However, leadership of the association in consultation with Chiefs and other prominent figures in the traditional area organized a conference few months ago to deliberate on measures to revamp the group.
A member of the Congress Organizing Committee, Alhaji Jagbo Baako said in an interview with THE CUSTODIAN that, what is needed now in Dagbon is consolidating the existing peace and to leverage on it to attract investors for development and avenues for job creation and employment opportunities for the youth.
“…That is why DAYA came together last three months and called all executives across the country with all Dagombas in othe regions representing to hold a conference. There, we choose that we will do a congress in April but unfortunately for us, we didn’t take into consideration the Islamic calendar and the Ramadan and we were compelled to move it to a later date” he explained.
He underscored the importance of revamping the Dagbon Youth Association, emphasizing, “The region is inundated with so many socioeconomic challenges and the situation require a collective effort in finding solutions to the issues, saying, “Everybody cannot continue to fight issues on their own ways but we have realized that if we’re able to come together with our Chiefs, we would be able to solve most of those problems that within Dagbon.”
“We have so many mushroom groups in Dagbon not coordinated and we need a larger group that would encompass all the groups so that we will have a common mouthpiece for the youth front in Dagbon” he added.
Consequently, Alhaji Jagbo indicated the program would be in two sessions – the public session in the morning and a closed door meeting in the afternoon to deliberate on proposals for the nomination of new executives who would steer the affairs of the association.
“As part of the rules of DAYA as we’re told by the current executives and other stakeholders, there wouldn’t be an election; because there must a winner and loser at the end of an election and in this case we do not want to have losers or winners. But recommendations would be made to the our Chiefs and opinion leaders to deliberate, taking into cognizance the background of those they think would be capable to represent the group.
There are also suggestions that since it has been long that DAYA did not operate, there was the need to have the current executives to run for some time but definitely there are some vacancies because some of them [executives] are incapacitated and others have died and there would be replacement to fill such vacancies” Jagbo Baako explained.
