Well, The Okyenhene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, has spoken to the Kwame Zu-NDC’s rather cavalier and abominably sacrilegious impugnation of the dignity of His Majesty and the globally celebrated image and integrity of the Ofori-Panyin Stool and Okyeman, in particular the Akyem-Abuakwa State, as well. Earlier on, former President Jerry John Rawlings, the founder of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), had spoken in support of the massive protest demonstration staged by the chiefly leaders of the Akyem-Abuakwa Traditional Council. But, of course, Mr. Rawlings, Ghana’s longest-reigning junta leader and democratically elected President, himself of half-Scottish and half-Ewe descent, like the Ewe-descended Asante Regional Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, in the latter instance, that is, had quite a different understanding about the imperative need for Okyeman to unreservedly unleash its justifiable conniption on the criminal perpetrator and regicidal assailant.
I have already written and published a couple of rejoinders on the Kwame Zu calumny and so do not feel the need to reprise the same in the present column. Suffice it, however, to tangentially adumbrate on the fact that I have decided to highlight and/or underscore the Ewe ethnicity of both Messrs. Rawlings and Kwame Zu because it was during one of those Ewe-nationalist rallies that Mr. Zu was widely reported to have asserted that but for the timely intervention of then-President John Dramani Mahama and his National Democratic Congress’ regime, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, would still be drinking from the same heavily polluted waterbody and water source with livestock and wild animals in the Atiwa-Atweredu Forest. Now, nobody needs a fetching college degree from the University of Ghana to fully appreciate the inexcusably damning connotations and denotations of the preceding vitriolic public statement that was widely attributed to the Asante Regional Secretary of the National Democratic Congress.
To say that the preceding immitigably insolent salvo volleyed at His Majesty, The Okyenhene, and the Ancient Okyeman State, was tantamount to the declaration of a full-scale war by the Western Togoland secessionists, so-called, against both The Okyenhene and Okyeman, as a whole, is a gross understatement. But, of course, it also goes without saying that the lifting of the ban against Mr. Zu by Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin and his courtiers of the Akyem-Abuakwa Traditional Council has several positive benefits and/or ramifications, including that of the significant reduction of tensions between the leaders of the country’s two major political parties and their members, supporters and sympathizers and, indeed, the country at large. What the lifting of the ban also means is that it promptly and healthily levels the electioneering playing field in Akyem-Abuakwa, in particular, and for the nation at large, for the leaders of both major political parties and, hopefully, in many of the pro-NDC electoral strongholds around the country as well, thereby significantly enhancing the rule of law and the quality of Ghana’s democratic culture.
Ultimately, what The Okyenhene and the Akyem-Abuakwa Traditional Council have achieved by their latest kindly, mature and progressive gesture is to raise the general level of how ethno-political problems and differences are resolved in the country. The catch here, though, is that Mr. Kwame Zu well appears to have been merely walking the well-beaten and well-worn path of routine and rampant Mahama-fangled abuse of The Okyenhene and Okyeman, as all Ghanaians witnessed in the runup to the 2016 general election and may very well have significantly contributed to the massive loss of the latter election by both then-President John Dramani Mahama and the National Democratic Congress. And on the latter count, of course, we are alluding to the “Galamsey Capital” sneer by the Gonja native before an august conference of a full-panoply of the membership of the Akyem-Abuakwa Traditional Council.
Hopefully, the Kwame Zu faux-pas will put a definitive end to such rampant incidents of brazen political abuse of traditional rulers who are perceived, rightly or wrongly, by some political party leaders and their assigns and representatives to be the ideological opponents of these diarrheal-mouthed abusers. A word to the wise….
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