The paramount chief of Kpandai in the Northern region has served notice that only persons with knowledge in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) would be allowed to occupy traditional leadership roles.

Kpandai Wura, Nana Bresiam Okoree Atorsah II, has also given an ultimatum to chiefs in his traditional area to acquire ICT skills or risk losing their stools.

Kpandai, the capital of the Kpandai district, is one of the deprived communities in the Northern Region.

Deprivation is so real that imaginary ICT lessons are held in schools in the area without computers.

But thanks to the benevolence of a US-based couple, their Soles of Hope NGO and their collaborators donated a fully-stocked library and computer laboratory equipped with internet, and a library have been donated to the community.

The chiefs and people met the news with ecstasy.

The paramount chief of the area, Kpandai Wura, Nana Bresiam Okoree Atorsah II, is asking the 52 members of the Kpandai Traditional Council to take advantage and upgrade their knowledge in ICT.

“We didn’t know computer, and if now, we have a computer  lab in the town, why don’t you run to go and learn how to do it.”

Kpandai Wura has prescribed the dress code for chiefs and traditional council members attending ICT lessons at the new computer laboratory.

“One would have to be in a tire; clean dresses, then you enter there. You should be neat. No dirty person is allowed to go there,” he said.

According to Kpandai Wura Nana Atorsah, not only is knowledge in ICT a requirement for chieftaincy in the area but a must for all would-be chiefs and already installed chiefs.

He says he will no longer approve of any ICT-illiterate candidate nominated for the chieftaincy position.

“Formerly, we put people who are not educated; they can’t read, they can’t write as chiefs. But this time, we have learned so much that nobody would like to stay back by getting this computer.

You will learn it,” Nana Atorsah said.

“We have half of them-they’ve been to school somewhere, and then because of money, they dropped out. They can still go and learn the computer.

Once you have it and you don’t go and learn it, you are out of the chieftaincy,” he added.

For officials of Soles of Hope, the desire by the elderly to embrace and acquire ICT knowledge means their target has been achieved.

Vice-President of Soles of Hope, Fred Osei-Yeboah, is Vice President of the Association.

“For us, we’ve achieved what we want to achieve because if the elderly are embracing what we’ve done, can you imagine  what these high school kids  and the ones who are nearing on to go to university the drive  that will come out of them.”