‘Akonfem’ saga: “Guinea fowls didn’t fly to Burkina Faso” – Mahama refutes claims
John Dramani Mahama, the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has refuted claims that guinea fowls under the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) initiative flew to Burkina Faso during his presidency in 2014.
Speaking during a media engagement in Bolgatanga at the conclusion of his Upper East Region tour, Mahama clarified that the widely circulated story was based on misinformation.
Mahama explained that the SADA project was designed to incubate guinea fowl eggs, with day-old chicks distributed to farmers for rearing. He dismissed the notion that the birds were to be kept in a single, enclosed area, as was popularly believed. The former president criticized the media for failing to thoroughly investigate the project, which led to the erroneous reports.
“No guinea fowl flew to Burkina Faso. Guinea fowls are not migratory birds,” Mahama asserted. He recounted how a casual remark by a watchman about the birds traveling to Burkina Faso was taken out of context and sensationalized by the media, resulting in widespread misconceptions about the project.
“And so somebody came and asked the watchman, ‘where are the guinea fowls? And the watchman said, they go Burkina Faso, they go come back in the rainy season.’ The media went and published it. And after that, there are people who believe that there were some guinea fowls that flew to Burkina Faso. So that project died. But I think it is a project we can look at again.”
Mahama also revealed that the SADA initiative included plans to process mature guinea fowls and distribute them to markets across the country, but the project was derailed by the negative publicity. He suggested that the project, despite its challenges, is worth reconsidering in the future.
“There was supposed to be a processing plant so that the guinea fowls would be bought off the households and processed. And they would put them in frozen trucks to send them down to the south to the market. Unfortunately, the project ran into issues. The media criticised it, and they came and said the guinea fowls had flown to Burkina Faso.”
