Questioning people's nationality is a recipe for chaos.

Abdulhamid

Questioning people's nationality can be a recipe for chaos. If you don't know, read about K.A. Busia’s Aliens Compliance Order of November 18, 1969. Some of us have Togolese routes. We've traced and are aware of this routes. I have family on both sides of the boarder and when I go to Lome, Sokodé, Fazao or Dapaong in Togo today, I can walk straight to a family house and will be welcomed. If we allow anyone with some discretionary powers to decide who isn't or is a Ghanaian, we're in for a dangerous future. This was why some of us took the Voter Registration Exercise personal.

It wasn't all political. Nobody should be allowed to question anybody's citizenship for their selfish interest. It's not a joke. And why Volta Region always? Anytime I travel through either Aflao, Kpalimé, or Tatale on my way to Togo, I see people who are virtually dual citizens. They live either in Ghana or Togo during the day, and sleep on either side during the night. If you look for my great-grandfather's village of Fazao on the map, you'll realize that it's just sperated from Ghana by the Akuapem-Togo Ranges.

From Fazao through Tase to Nkwanta is a journey my parents and their parents and grandparents traveled by foot. What that meant was that, right from Fazao down to Nkwanta, we have relatives in most if not all the villages because as people moved along these routes, they settle for either farming or trading purposes. These relatives are either Togolese or Ghanaians today not by choice but because of the artificial boundaries created by the greedy European.

The partitioning of Africa was caused mainly by the greed of one individual: King Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo Basin. King Leopold hired explorers led by Henry Morton Stanley to explore and navigate the Congo and arrange trade with the local leaders of the area. King Leopold had the idea of exploitation and profit making at the expense of the people of Congo. Other European countries such as Britain, France and Portugal who were already in Africa exploiting the people through the slave trade which has just been abolished became uncomfortable and agitated at the actions of the Belgian King leading to an eminent conflict over the Congo Basin. Then, Otto Von Bismarck, the then German chancellor called for a conference in Berlin to hold a discussion regarding the annexation of territories in Africa in December 1884. This conference travelled into January 1885. This conference is what is famously known as the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885.

Mere boundaries do not distinguish people. We are one people. Before the creation of these boundaries we were identify by our tribes or clan name. Every tribe lived in a specific area, spoke a specific language and had it's own leaders who made rules and served justice for and on behalf of the people. These tribes engaged in either farming or trading for survival and occasionally waged wars to expand their territories or ward off invaders. As social animals, we are bonded by our culture, values, language, festivals, history and the things that identify us as the social components of the environment. Boundaries are mere demarcations. So from being people living together in tribal groupings, the Europeans created countries that brought different tribes together. An Ewe or a Kotokoli man became either a Ghanaian or a Togolese depending on where he finds himself in 1884/5.

Nobody in Africa, not a king or a commoner was on the table when Africa was partitioned. So how'll they have known that there are Kotokoli people in Kue, in Zabzugu and some in Togo who collectively are one people? How will they have known that some Ewes cannot be in Ghana alone and that they have an ancestral home of Notsie in Togo? So if the White Man was successful in dividing us in 1884, are we that stupid to keep dividing ourselves in 2021? Questioning the nationality of an Ewe man holding a Ghanaian passport is the worst form of insult you can insult such a person. And we must not contenance such nonsense.