No Guinea fowl flew to Burkina Faso in 2014- Mahama

The 2024 flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, has denied that guinea fowls from the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) scheme flew to Burkina Faso during his presidency in 2014.

These claims made headlines in 2014, implying that guinea fowls from the SADA programme had relocated to the neighboring countries.

The former president dismissed the charges, calling them unfounded, while speaking to the media in Bolgatanga at the end of his Upper East Region trip on Wednesday, August 7.

He explained that the project was misunderstood and distorted in the media.

"No guinea fowl flew to Burkina Faso. Guinea fowls are not migratory birds and the project was not for you to come and see thousands of guinea fowls in one place. It was supposed to incubate the eggs and give the guinea fowls’ day-old chicks to farmers."

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," he insisted.

The former president went on to say that an intricate plan was in place to process the mature guinea fowls.

 According to him, the prepared birds would subsequently be shipped to other market centers across the country.

"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," he added.

Source : Lead News Online