Let’s Focus on National Development and Cut These Frivolities

I have personally chosen to stay as tolerably far away from the current decidedly otiose and practically irrelevant debate over the question of whether the Ga-language word for “Welcome” ought to, perforce, be displayed on signage or sign boards and posts at “all the major entry points and on all national monuments” in Ghana (See “Respect Ga people in Accra, it's their land – Linda Ocloo on 'Akwaaba' row” Modernghana.com 8/29/25).

Now, this is a tough sell for a number of reasons none of which is/are apt to satisfy all the parties engaged in such debate. Now, I use the word “such” to adjectivally or adverbially qualify this patently much ado about nothing, in Shakespearean parlance, because Yours Truly would rather more morally and culturally soberly discuss the present genocidal impact of Galamsey, that is, the globally infamous illegal small-scale mining menace, than the fact of whether both the statue and the name of the immortalized Lt.-Gen. Ernest Kwasi Kotoka should be removed from the frontage or the foreground of the former Accra International Airport (AIA), as has been intermittently presumptuously and vehemently demanded by some revisionary scoundrels of the Nkrumah-leaning Rump-Convention People’s Party (R-CPP), who are much too pathologically blinkered by their fanatical partisanship to recognize the unarguable fact that the fluxional flow of the momentous and the irreversible chain of historical events can simply not be harnessed or controlled in the way that one dams up a river and meddle with its natural ebb and flow like the Akosombo or the Bui Dam.

But even on the latter count, as those of us who are old enough to have lived at least a generation or two and up may remember, there is only so much that humans can do to significantly affect the natural order of things, except those regarding the conduct of human excesses, such as the scandalously noetic and bestial refusal of the apparently incurably corrupt leaders of the country’s two major political parties and their economically parasitic allies and surrogates. Sometimes, I am inclined to wonder why we keep calling Galamsey “illegal small-scale mining,” since this is actually the psychopolitically shameless national development agenda of the Mahama 2.0 regime.

For the President, Mr. John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama, what matters most to the leadership and the rank-and-file membership of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), is the next general election, that is, the dogged determination of the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia Posse and the Gonja Mafia to hang on to power by hook-and-or-crook, as the Global Community witnessed with amused contempt and, even in some cases horror, in the wake of the closure of the December 2024 General Election, when the leadership of the then main opposition National Democratic Congress, led by its National Information Officer - formerly called the National Propaganda Officer - rallied battalions of party thugs and hoodlums to swamp the various Vote-Collation Centers throughout the country and seize and destroy each and every ballot box being transported to these collation centers by Returning Officers and Electoral Commission Staff and Polling Monitors for the final count.

In short, the argument that I am making here is that we all need to arrange our priorities as a nation intelligently and constructively for the welfare of all before straying into such existential frivolities, relatively speaking, of course, as the question of whether the language of choice of welcoming foreigners and returnee sojourners displayed at all the major entry points into Our Beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana ought to be in Akan-Twi, the most widely spoken language in the country, besides the British-imposed language of English, or any of the other ethnic -minority languages.

For starters, it is not clear to this author precisely what is meant by having the Ga-language word for “Akwaaba” or “Welcome” being replaced by the Ga version of “Oobake,” which is mainly spoken in Ghana’s capital of Accra, and inscribed on all national monuments located thereabouts. You see, the second most controversial problem - assuming that I have the numerical tabulation of my counter-argument smack on target, is the patently inaccurate presumption that, somehow, all foreigners and visitors who enter the country from abroad or overseas do so through the Greater-Accra Region alone. Which, of course, is absolutely not true, although it can also not be denied that quite a remarkable number or percentage of foreign visitors and Ghanaian returnees from abroad enter the country through the world-famous Kotoka International Airport (KIA).

That was almost definitely the case when Ghana had KIA as the main and the sole entry point into the country by air. Now, we have the Otumfuo Agyeman-Prempeh, I, International Airport, located just outside the Kumasi Metropolis in the Asante Region, constructed under the two-consecutive-term watch of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. And then, there is the Tamale Regional Airport, which is fast shaping up to become Ghana’s Third International Airport, with a handful of others in the works or process. But what I really wanted to underscore, first and foremost, is the patently unarguable fact that approximately 70-percent of Ghana’s coastal landmarks are predominantly Akan, with an overwhelming majority of the tourist attractions being located in predominantly Akan-populated or originally “owned” lands.

So, it is not clear to this author what kind of proprietary arrogance is rearing its ugly head here, once again, at a time when the very existence and the long-term survival of Ghanaians are in great danger under the tenure of a government which prefers to focus its attention and national development policy agenda on the next general election, rather than drastically reduce the wanton destruction of our lands and forestry resources, as well as our waterbodies.

Thirdly, if these Ga-language agitators really knew the history of the ethnic composition of the present-day Greater-Accra Region which, by the way, until relatively recently was also the Regional Capital of the Eastern Region, thus the long-delayed development of Koforidua, the present-day Eastern Regional Capital, they would not be making the sort of grossly misguided argument that they so desperately seem to be obsessed with or unduly fixated on, in particular the history of the Akan-speaking Akwamu People of the Aduana Clan or Monarchical Paramountcy who ruled and virtually dominated at least a third of the entire West African Subregion for approximately 400 years!

By the way, I often sheepishly shy away from the historical dominance or suzerainty of the Akwamu People within the West African Subregion, largely because of their disproportionate role in the globally infamous Transatlantic Slave Trade in African Humanity. I could also not help but wonder how the Greater-Accra Minister, by the name of Linda Obenewaa Akweley Ocloo, supposes that she came by her Akan natal-name of “Obenewaa” which, by the way, is closely allied with the Ga birth-ranking name of “Akweley,” both of which are a contradiction in terms, by the way, because while the name “Obenewaa” refers to the younger of twin sisters, Yours Truly’s own beloved late mother was “Aninwaa” or “Aniniwaa,” that is, the elder of twin sisters, the name “Akweley,” on the other hand, is the Ga name for the elder one of twin sisters. You see, in the Ga-language “Obenewaa” is “Akuorkor.”

Fourthly, what many of these “Ga-Language Warriors” also either flatly refuse or scandalously and peevishly fail to take into account is the clearly inescapable fact that language is all about “Economics.” The fact of the matter is that any business investor or entrepreneur, for just one most obvious example, wishing to settle in Ghana with the critical and the primary objective of spending some time in the country and being able to communicate with a critical mass of the people more intimately besides the usage of the English, would be better off learning the one language that would enable them to reach the largest number of people.

Even in Ghana’s capital of Accra, more people speak Akan-Twi and some of the other Akan-based or derived dialects than Ga, including a sizable majority of the so-called Ga indigenes themselves. What is more, even the present Ga-Mantse (or the Ga Paramount King) Nii Takie (Takyi?) Teiko Tsuru, II, is likely the descendant of the Great King Tackie Tawiah (Nana Takyi Tawiah), the Akwamu-descended statesman of remarkable and fabled repute. His mother’s name was Naa Ashong Danso, very likely of mixed Akwamu-Fante and Ga heritage, and his father, Nii Teiko Doku. Do these names resonate with the sort of Akan-endangered species of humanity and discrete cultural identity direly in need of the jealous protection of the Greater-Accra Minister? (See “Tackie Tawiah I, the Accra King Who Defied British Order to Steal the Golden Stool” Ghanaweb.com 11/11/23).

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

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