Return Western Togoland Rebels to their Home Country of Benin

Ewes may be reckoned to be an ethnic minority in Ghana, but they are unquestionably a significant ethnic minority in our country. As a political bloc that hijacked and ruled Ghana for more than 20 years – and here the references are, of course, to the Jerry John Rawlings-led Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), the Rawlings-Tsikata Diarchy of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta, and the 8-year “democratically sanctioned” rule of the Rawlings-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) – the Ewes are not the sort of politically marginalized or disempowered ethnic group or polity that Dr. Kwesi Aning would have the global Ghanaian community believe that they are (See “Government Must Negotiate with Togoland ‘Rebels’ – Kwesi Aning” Ghanaweb.com 9/26/20).

We also need to underscore the fact that the so-called Western Togoland Study Group or Homeland Study Group secessionists were not overtly active or in existence at all during the 20 protracted years that the Rawlings-Tsikata Diarchy rigidly imposed what the late Prof. Albert Adu-Boahen described as a “Culture of Silence” on the country, for most of the 1980s and the early 1990s. indeed, ever since the center of official national power shifted from the Anlo-Ewe-dominated National Democratic Congress, we have had Ewe leaders, both traditional and postcolonial, rail against what they term as their political and civic alienation from the country, first, with the accession of the John Agyekum-Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and, now, the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party. For example, we have had Chairman Rawlings, who brazenly imposed Ewe suzerainty on Ghanaians, self-righteously accuse President Kufuor of imposing “Asante Imperialism” on Anlo-Ewes in the recent past, especially in the wake of the then-President Agyekum-Kufuor’s deployment of soldiers and police personnel following the outbreak of the Anloga Chieftaincy Hostilities that resulted in the internecine butchery of several members of the factions involved.

We have also had the current President of the National House of Chiefs (NHC), the Agbogbomefia – whatever this title means – of the so-called Asogli State, bitterly complain about the then-President Kufuor’s having made Togbe Afede, XIV, feel like a complete stranger in the land of his birth. And if yours truly recalls accurately, we have also had young political upstarts like Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for the Tongu-North Constituency, in the Volta Region, also make similar remarks in the very recent past. But, perhaps, even more significant is the fact that not very long ago, an FM radio station located in the heart of Mr. Ablakwa’s own North-Tongu Constituency or District was ordered to be shuttered by the government for broadcast programming that was considered to be both seditious and treasonous.

Now, what all the preceding points to is the fact that there very well may be some prominent and very influential Ewe-descended citizen masterminds and sympathizers behind the widely acknowledged to be the well-coordinated activities of the Western Togoland Secessionists. So, the most logical question becomes: Why do these blood-dripping terrorists suppose that, somehow, they have an inalienable right to hijack Ghanaian democracy and to illegitimately rule our country for some 11 years and two consecutive elective terms, as well as another Ewe-dominated NDC “democratic” rule of 8 years but, somehow, leaders of the Akan majority-dominated New Patriotic Party have absolutely no right to legitimately and democratically rule our country? Are the Ewes who actually ruined the socio-economic development of this country some superhumans who deserve to exclusively rule Ghana and hermetically impose their will on the rest of us Akan Ghanaian majority and all the other allied non-Akan and non-Ewe ethnic polities?

This is really the question that “National Security Experts” like Dr. Aning ought to be posing to and answering for the rest of us, instead of indulging in such chaotic illogicalities and nonsensical effusions about the imperative need to “jaw it up” with a mess of bandits whose sole objective clearly appears to be the promotion and imposition of ethnic supremacy and absolutely nothing else? Already, these Western Togoland Terrorists (WTTs) have let it be known that they are the bona fide morally degenerate scions and descendants of Togbe Agorkoli, the infamous extortionate and barbaric precolonial Dahomey chieftain, of the present-day Republic of Benin, whose unspeakably depraved rulership caused the ancestors of these so-called Western Togolanders to flee for asylum and refuge in present-day Ghana.

I mean, the solution is simple: Either we promptly and summarily execute these barbarian war criminals caught on the battlefield or negotiate with the Benin authorities to receive them back. These criminal reprobates brought no land with them from Dahomey to the erstwhile Gold Coast. And they have absolutely no right to demand any land or be ceded any land. Not even an inch or a millimeter of sovereign Ghana’s landed property. It is as simple as that!

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

September 27, 2020

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net