Asanteman Has Suzerainty Rights Over Dormaa and Bono

The original caption that I had intended for this column was “Every Nation-State Has Been Enslaved at Onetime or Another.” It is only within this historical frame of reference or historiographical context and understanding that one can fully appreciate the sort of intemperate verbal exchanges that have been widely reported to have transpired between The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu, II, and Oseadeeyo Agyeman-Badu, II, vis-à-vis the question of whether the people of Dormaa Ahenkro and the Modern Bono Kingdom owe any monarchical or chieftaincy allegiance to the Grand Overlord of Asanteman, that is, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu, or even more appropriately, the Okomfo Anokye-Opemusuo Osei-Tutu, I,-minted globally renowned and celebrated Golden Stool or Sikagua Kofi, in the original Akan language (See “I Don’t Talk Anyhow Because of My Upbringing but I Will Face You Squarely – Otumfuo to Dormaahene” Ghanaweb.com 1/18/22).

This is not the very first time that the purely psycho-political question of Ethnic Supremacy has arisen in the country. Fortunately, this kind of unsavory psychological hung-up is fast receding into the jaded or cliched dustbin of history, as the primacy of the socioeconomic existence and survival of Modern Ghanaians has increasingly become the topmost priority of both Fourth-Republican Ghanaian leaders, politicians and the global Ghanaian citizenry at large. What makes the admittedly provocative effusions of the Dormaahene, that is, Nana Agyeman-Badu, II, quaint and laughable is that history, by its very labile nature, is fluxional and constantly and eternally evolving. This is what Americans call “The Wheel of Fortune.” In other words, “Osagyefo” Agyeman-Badu is perfectly within his rights to smugly assert that the Asante Nation and its people were once the subjects or even slaves of The King and the people of the Kingdom of Denkyira or Denkira, as some foreign historians have been apt to write and/or identify the same.

But, of course, it also goes without saying that the Dormaahene only told half of the story, rather than the whole or the entire story when he left his captive audience suspended by also not telling them precisely how it presently came about that the Denkyira State and Nation are located in the Central Region and have been reckoned to be an integral part of the defunct Fante Confederacy since about 1868, if memory serves yours truly accurately. You see, it is tantamount to intellectual mischief and plain sophistry when the Dormaahene, self-described as a historian and, I suppose, a professionally trained lawyer as well, dates the history of the Bono people from 1640, during the reign of Nana Ansa Sasraku, a period during which the Asante Nation and later Empire had not fully come into existence as a dominant political force to reckon with. Nana Agyeman-Badu does not tell his audience that the Akwamu were the predominant force and “internal” colonial power in the entire West African Subregion between AD/CE 1200 and 1700 (You can read up further on this period from the “Encyclopedia of West African History”).

The mid-17^th Century is rather too late in Modern Akan History of which the Akwamu had been central and unarguably predominant. It is also highly unlikely, contrary to what “Osagyefo” Agyeman-Badu would have his audience believe, that the Dormaa or Bono people had not been conquered and/or colonized by the Akwamu, who were not well known to brook any rivalry within their political sphere of dominance and/or influence. Nana Agyeman-Badu is very likely conveniently economizing the factual historical reality. He ought not to be allowed to get away with such historiographical niggardliness or facile historiographical economization of the temporal reality on the ground. By the way, I have decided to put Nana Agyeman-Badu’s brave warrior’s title of “Osagyefo” in quotes or quotation marks because I prefer to reserve the latter title for the Okyenhene, that is, the King and Kings of Akyem-Abuakwa.

It is also quite certain at this juncture that the Dormaahene is eerily anticipating my next discursive stop or location. He does not talk about the most widely acknowledged sophisticated and civilized architects of the period, namely, the Adansi/Adanse, obviously because his narrative canvas does not include the entire Akan historiography over the course of the past half-millennium or 500 years, so those of us who are avidly interested in the entirety of Mega-Akan History may have to force him to it. It is also quite obvious that Nana Agyeman-Badu has provoked a battle that he may not be able or ready to stop, short of the timely intervention of the key operatives of the Ghana National House of Chiefs. He would be dangerously and fatally miscalculating, if the Dormaahene lightly supposes that hiding behind the very fragile façade of Ghana’s Fourth-Republican dispensation is apt to protect him from his devious perpetration of such blatant and flagrant mischief. This is absolutely in no way a threat to either his person or traditional status within the comity of Ghanaian society. It is just a very friendly familial reminder.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

January 19, 2022

E-mail: [email protected]