Osu Indigenes Are Historically Partly Akwamu and Akyem

Ordinarily, I would not be defending the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in a situation involving the egocentric misappropriation of other people’s ancestral heritage or patrimony. At least the youngest daughter of the late Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia has been as equally peeved as the family and the clan members of Mr. Tetteh Quarshie, the officially acknowledged founder of Ghana’s cocoa industry. The name Tetteh Quarshie, the last name, that is, clearly represents a variation of the Akan Day Name of “Kwasi,” that is, a male born on Sunday, very likely, or even the Fante variation of “Kwesi.” So, it is not altogether outlandish or totally out of cultural context that Nana Akufo-Addo would have “mistaken” the ethnicity and the cultural provenance or origins of the Father and the Founder of Modern Ghana’s Cocoa Industry as Akuapem.

If Mr. Michael Nii Ayi Hammond, described as CEO of the Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Dynasty International Secretariat and grandson of the legendary Mr. Tetteh Quarshie, a goldsmith by profession, also knew the historically established fact that Mantse (King) Nii Tackie Tawiah or, perhaps, even more appropriately, “Nana Takyi Tawiah,” widely recognized as the Greatest Monarch of the Ga-Adangbe people, was of mixed Akwamu and Ga descent, he would not be raising such storm or Caine over whether Nana Akufo-Addo had erroneously indicated in his most recent Presidential Address at Ghana’s 2024, 67^th Independence Day Anniversary, which was nationally and internationally observed in Koforidua, capital of the Eastern Region, he would not be needlessly bickering over the fact or falsehood of whether the legendary Fernando Po, Equatorial Guinea, “Been-To” was of Ga descent or Akwamu and possibly Akyem descent (See “'Planting cocoa at Akuapem Mampong doesn't make Tetteh Quarshie a native' — Family 'schools' Akufo-Addo” Modernghana.com 3/18/24). We also know that until very recently, the Akan and the Ga-Adangbe both lived in the Eastern Region with Accra as the official capital of both the Eastern Region and the entire nation of Ghana at large. Koforidua is only a relatively recently established Post-Asante Juaben War Refugee Camp.

Today, for example, we have quite a remarkable slew of Ewe-descended people, not just in Ghana, but all over the West-African Subregion, or the ECOWAS Subregion, if you would, with Akan Day Names like Kofi/Cofie; Kwame/Kwami; Kwasi; Kwadwo/Kojo/Kodzo; Adwoa/Ajoa/Adzo and Akua or Eku, to name just a handful and the most commonly known, because sometime between CE/AD 1200 and 1600, the Akwamu nation and people dominated a large portion of the West-African Subregion. It would therefore be interesting and instructive for Nii Ayi Hammond to note that like the late Messrs. Harry Sawyerr, Kofi Atta Annan and Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is a scion or heir of the Akwamu Royal Family.

So really, as it is often said by our elders, the fruit almost invariably never falls far from the tree, as it were. For all that we know and/or really care to know, both Mr. Michael Nii Ayi Hammond and Mr. William Nana Kwaku Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo could very well be consanguineal or bona fide blood relatives. There is absolutely nothing rigidly written in stone about how one’s ethnicity or ethnic identity is acquired, most expert Cultural Anthropologists and Sociologists are apt tell you this much.

At any rate, what is equally important to note here is that historically speaking, new ethnic group identities are being created or formed all over the world all the time by periodic mass migrations, in exactly the same way undertaken by the immortalized Mr. Tetteh Kwasi or Tetteh Quarshie or even Kwasi Tetteh. Among the Akan, we have a maxim that runs as follows: “Okwae a Agyewo no, Wonfreno Okwaewa.” To wit, “The forest that has given you nourishment and sustenance and longevity is never disparaged.” Maybe the next step that a visibly irate and/or frustrated Nii Ayi Hammond should consider taking might be to promptly petition the Government of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, not necessarily the present Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), to dissociate the name of his great and legendary ancestor from the renowned major Akuapem-Mampong located Hospital that bears the same, to wit, The Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Hospital.

Trust me, there are dozens of other fairly equally distinguished Akuapem and Ghanaian citizens after whom the Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Hospital could be fittingly named, including the late Chief Justice and, later, Non-Executive President Edward Akufo-Addo. The fact of the matter is that but for his visionary and his commonsensical decision to migrate from his family residence or homestead in Osu, Accra, to Akuapem-Mampong, Tetteh Quarshie would likely not have been able to distinguish himself in the worldwide manner in which he did. Among the Akan, the dominant ethnic group in Ghana, we have a saying that: “Home is wherever you make it.” There were a lot of places in the hinterland or upcountry to which Nana Tetteh Kwasi or Opanyin Kwasi Tetteh could have migrated and undertaken his cocoa-plantation agriculture. But, instead, the foresighted young goldsmith chose to migrate and settle at Akuapem-Mampong.

Has Nii Ayi Hammond ever tried to figure out why Grandpa Tetteh Quarshie chose to settle at Akuapem-Mampong? And if this livid critic really cared so much about creating and sustaining a “Tetteh Quarshie Memorial ‘Dynasty,’” why hasn’t Michael Nii Ayi Hammond legally changed his name to, for example, Nii Ayi Tetteh Quarshie, II; or even more inclusively, Nii Ayi Quarshie-Hammond, or Nii Ayi Quarshie? There seems to me to be some problem having to do with cognitive dissonance here. But what I most desire to conclude this column by saying is that Michael Nii Ayi Hammond ought to be far more worried about those Ghanaian historians who have been fighting strenuously to have the credit given to Tetteh Quarshie for introducing cocoa-plantation agriculture to Ghana ceded to some European colonial cultural imperialist missionaries.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
March 18, 2024
E-mail: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com

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