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FLASHBACK: the overlord of Dagbon, Yaa Naa Yakubu Andani was murdered with 30 others in clashes in Yendi. On the fringes of the once dreaded Yendi, sits middle-aged Abukari Abdulai in the shade of a rundown blacksmith’s shop.He recollects, with tear-filled eyes, the events of March 25th- 27, 2002 in a town known to be the traditional home of the Dagomba people in Ghana’s northern regionThirty people murdered in cold blood; overlord of Dagbon, Yaa Naa Yakubu Andani killed and beheaded; scores of houses and shops razed down in a long standing family feud between the Abudu and Andani royal gates, that exploded in that spate of time.The two families are responsible for selecting a king for Dagbon, but that process has always come with tension.It still strikes Abudulai like yesterday, the story of the hundreds of final year students from Yendi who could not sit for their final Junior High School Exam in April, 2002 because all their teachers had to flee the area.He had relatives in that group of young people whose whereabouts, he does not know, ten years on.Changing timesToday, he’s the Secretary to the Boriguyili Blacksmiths association; such artisans have always been accused of being behind the many small arms and weapons that people use in torturing others when Yendi’s murky confusions break.In their lean season when there is no farming, nobody buys the hoes, cutlasses, and axes they manufacture so there is a temptation to produce small weapons in a region where people would want to stock such arms in readiness for confusion.Their new association is part of efforts to deter them from producing illegal weapons and assist them in gaining alternative livelihoods.As we met, he was meeting 64 other members of the association, who claim the trade is their inheritance.Once upon a time, sitting together alone was enough to cause someone to pull a trigger at the other.Today, they sit, laugh and plan how to flush out those who produce the arms and on how to make their own lives better.The report of the April 2002 Justice Wuaku commission, which investigated the clashes said;“The unfettered acquisition of local and sophisticated arms or weapons over a long period of time by the Andani and Abudu Families and/or their agents and the inability of the Security Agencies to prevent/retrieve same” was largely responsible for the incident.It recommended that government makes efforts at retrieving all such arms as they posed a threat to national security.The HSP interventionDevelopment in the three northern regions has been hindered by ongoing disputes over land, politics and chieftaincy.