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The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) has advised politicians to tone down their bitter political utterances and seek ways of jointly developing the country for peace and unity to prevail.

     Alhaji Abdul Razak Saani, the Northern Regional Director of the NCCE who made the appeal in Tamale at the weekend during a public forum on grassroots participation in governance organized by Penplusbytes an ICT based NGO working to promote good governance said politicians were doing the country more harm than good.

    The forum was intended to bring governance to the doorstep of citizens, especially those who are considered “democratic outsiders”, to have an input in decision making at the grassroots.

     It also served as a platform for the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly to inform citizens about their policy interventions, success stories and challenges in implementing projects while affording citizens the opportunity to question such interventions.

     Making All Voices Count (MAVC) funded the forum, which is the third in the series under the project “Grassroots Open Government using digital tools project” aimed at enhancing communication and information sharing between citizens and local government in two districts of Ghana; Dangbe (Ada) East District of Greater Accra and the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly in the Northern Region.

     Alhaji Saani who chaired the function said the bitter utterances spewed out by some politicians  when discussing issues would divide the country and stressed the need for such politicians to have the nation at heart and avoid divisive statements, adding "such utterances were not leaving good legacies for the future generations".

     “In Ghana everything is politicized and if we don’t take time, a period will come when doctors and nurses would demand  political ID cards before treatment”, he said.

     “Let us focus on issue- based arguments other than negative utterances that would continue to divide us as a country instead of bringing peace, togetherness and unity for the development of the country”, he said.

     Mr Jerry Sam, Programmes  Manager of Penplusbytes said the face-to-face forum was aimed at complementing the digital innovation efforts at transforming governance at the local level to enhance participatory budgeting, accountability and information sharing between the local assemblies and the people.

     He said the project is focusing on health, education and sanitation through a collaborative and integrated approach to enhance good governance.

     He assured that the project would strengthen the engagement frameworks between citizens and governments for purposes of effective monitoring of programmes, development projects, budget appropriation and decision making within the targeted districts.