The Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA) has accused Mr Ambrose Dery, a Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice of sabotaging the development of Northern Ghana. In a statement issued in Accra at the weekend, the group accused Mr Dery, immediate past Upper-West Regional Minister of refusing to forward a petition to the government on "Discrimination and marginalization of Northern Ghana" which was presented to him on July 18, this year after a peaceful protest in Wa. The statement signed by Mr Ayorogo Adongo Bismarck, president, said the Minister did not only shelve the petition in which the group made a number of demands on government, but rejected its contents outright with an excuse that they were "baseless, unfounded and without merit" and that "our concerns raised in the petition had been addressed". "This action of the Minister attempts to give weight to the weightless perception held by others that Northerners are their own enemies in development," the statement noted, saying according to the 2005/6 Ghana Living Standards Survey, the Upper West Region where the Minister came from had not seen any improvement in the lives of the people as poverty increased from 84 percent in 1999 to 88 percent in 2006. "It is surprising that while the minister is kicking against the development of the North, he is at the same time seeking the mandate of the same people to represent them in Parliament, come 2008." The group appealed to the minister not to "choose politics over his people's lives but to be moved by the deplorable conditions in the north and show empathy to the suffering masses in Northern Ghana by forwarding the petition without any further delay". Source: GNA