Rather, the President should have fired him to send a strong signal that his government was against ethnicity, Alhaji A.B.A. Fuseini, the Member of Parliament for Sagnarigu in the Northern Region and the spokesperson for the Minority Members of Parliament has said.

In a radio interview on Accra based Neat FM Wednesday morning, in reaction to the resignation of the deputy minister over his ethnocentric comment that farmers in Northern Ghana were difficult people to deal with, Alhaji Fuseini said: “I even thought that even before he resigned, the bigger message would have been for the President to fire him.”

“If the President had fired him, that would have sent the message, fire him with a statement that he is not even interested in his government for anybody to engage in such level of arrogance as far as public discourse is concerned.”

“That he [President] will not tolerate a situation where anybody can make divisive statements which has the potential to create divisions in this country, has a potential to compromise our peace, order and stability. The effect of resignation is same as dismissal, but I think the message that would have been sent would have been different so that public officials will sit up. Anytime that a public official wants to open his mouth to talk to people, he will do so with decorum and respect and eschew arrogance, and know that he is in public service at the behest of the people,” he said.

Alhaji Fuseini said for him, the resignation was good for “our democracy and good governance and all of us will learn useful lessons from it.”

He said the apology from Mr Quaitoo was “insincere” and that “Northerners have come to a point where …we have been insulted long enough. There has been series of insults against northerners, some say that if Nkrumah had not come, those of us from the north would have been reduced to the status of cattle herds, and would have been chasing sheeps and goats in the bush and that we have been benefited from the scholarship scheme, some have even said that we don’t come from resource rich areas where its possible for us to get somebody to stir the affairs of state as President and that and that it was an accident of history.”

"So many things have been said negatively against northerners and we thought that this one was the end of it, we were not prepared to take it any longer and I’m sure you could see the sentiments from the three northern regions…the message was clear that nothing short of the departure of the Minister will even have wind down the damage that has been done in the northern part of the country."