He is a member of an ethnic polity that for 20 long years hijacked Ghanaian democracy and shamelessly and doggedly promoted anti-Akan ethnic supremacy, and ethnic cleansing program and pogrom, culminating in the strategic massacre of some Akan-descended military rulers and high court judges. The Founding-Father of his own political party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Chairman Jeremiah John Rawlings, once virulently accused his successor of imposing “Asante Imperialism” on the Anlo-Ewe in the southeastern corner of the country, because in 2008, or thereabouts, the then-President John Agyekum-Kufuor had dared to wisely dispatch some National Security Operatives to Anloga, the traditional royal capital of the Anlo-Ewe sub-polity, near Ghana’s southeastern border with Togo, to prevent some members of the Anloga royal family from literally exterminating each other over a chieftaincy dispute.
And then, not very long ago, the so-called War Commander of his own Asogli State, so-called, threatened to unleash hell and mayhem on the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party (NPP), because President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had dared to legally carve the land of the perennially and internally exploited and oppressed people of the riverine Oti enclave of the Northern Volta out of the Volta Region Proper. So, indeed, there is tribalism in Ghana, plenty tribalism, to be certain, but the level of tribalism in the country presently is far below the cancerous level and nature of the Anlo-Ewe supremacist tribalism that prevailed in Ghana under the 20-year Rawlings-Tsikata Diarchy of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), including the 8 years of the stage-managed democratically elected rule and gross mis-governance of our country by the former Flt-Lt Jerry John Rawlings of the Ghana Airforce.
Which is why one finds it all-too-laudable that the Agbogbomefia – I find his royal title to be rather spooky – of the Asogli State, Togbe Afede, XIV, would issue his rather quaint call for the radical cessation of all ethno-tribal hostilities from his native area or enclave of the Volta Region and from the Volta Regional House of Chiefs. You see, I find Togbe Afede’s call for the radical cessation of tribal hostilities to be rather quaint because even as a legitimately invested traditional ruler, the Yale University graduate in Business Management has cavalierly ridden roughshod over the statutory stipulations of Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Constitution to engage in partisan politics. For example, during the transitional handover period from the tenure of former President John Agyekum-Kufuor to the beginning of the tenure of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills, Togbe Afede served as Chair of at least some two transitional committees, representing the newly elected Prof. Atta-Mills.
Which is also why I find his call for the formation of a Continental Organization of Tribal Chieftains to complement postcolonial African governments to be at once totally unacceptable, dangerously suspicious and utterly absurd. It is suspicious because the sort of collaboration that Togbe Afede appears to be calling for, and we have already witnessed this here in Ghana, will certainly lead to more corruption on the African Continent. Already, as Ghanaians witnessed in the inadvisably aborted December 17, 2019 Akufo-Addo-initiated Referendum to democratize the way and manner in which our Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executive Officers (MMDCEs) are selected or appointed, the members of Ghana’s National House of Chiefs, led by Togbe Afede, who is also President of the NHC, quickly rallied to the support of the leaders of the country’s main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress, of which Togbe Afede is a sworn dues-paying member, to effectively sabotage this most salutary process of constitutionally democratic power-sharing mechanism.
Ironically, it is Ghanaian citizens and leaders like Togbe Afede who have been perennially and bitterly complaining about the unsavory winner-takes-all Fourth-Republican political culture in the country. In the leadup to the 2012 General Election, as the then-National Chairman of the then-opposition New Patriotic Party bitterly lamented, the then-Interim President John Dramani Mahama strategically “donated” a couple dozen, or so, SUV’s to some “carefully selected” members of the National House of Chiefs, then convened in one of Ghana’s regional capitals, to seal up the outcome of that year’s December Presidential Election. Maybe what Togbe Afede ought to be staunchly and vehemently advocating is the complete abolition of all tribal cultures and ethnic groups and polities on the African Continent, beforehand, if he genuinely feels so strongly about the pathology of Continental African Tribalism (CAT) being no less pernicious and deleterious than Western- or European-fomented or brewed racism.
Not very long ago, for instance, the Chairman of the Volta Regional Chapter of Togbe Afede’s own political party, the National Democratic Congress, was widely reported by the media to have called for the immediate removal of the Akan-descended Vice-Chancellor of the publicly funded Volta Region-located University of Allied Health Sciences, Prof. Gyapong, in retaliation for the prior court-mired removal of the Ewe-descended former Vice-Chancellor of the Winneba-, Central Region, located University of Education. The irony here, though, is that the politician widely alleged to have been behind the removal of Prof. Avoke, the former UEW (University of Education, Winneba), Mr. Afenyo-Markin, is himself of half-Ewe descent, if the information available to me is reliable.
At any rate, I perfectly agree with Togbe Afede that there is more work to be done among ourselves, as Ghanaian citizens, especially at the critical level of intercultural education on the imperative need for the peaceful coexistence of all the ethno-tribal polities that make up the geopolitical and geo-cultural space we presently call Ghana, if our country is to organically transition into the much more civilized status of a Nation. You see, yours truly is personally the victim of tribal rejection by his own maternal clan, because sometime during the 1870s and 1880s, his great-great-grandmother made the “egregious and scandalous mistake” of marrying a member of the Peki-Blengo royal family. It is a scar that I bear on my heart and soul that refuses to heal.
*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr@modernghana.com
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