The Kantanka Tragedy: A Father's Day with Gunshots Over a Father's Gains! Abilolo's Random Musings..

Yesterday, many of us woke up to disturbing reports surrounding a shooting incident involving Sarah Adwoa Safo at her late father's residence. The matter is now under police investigation, and the facts will ultimately be established by the authorities. Yet, regardless of where the investigations lead, one painful reality has already been publicly exposed; the growing struggle for wealth, power, succession, and relevance within one of Ghana's most prominent families.

I tell you, the irony is heartbreaking!
Honorable Adwoa Safo was once celebrated as one of the youngest lawyers in the whole of Africa. Her brother, Akofena Kwadwo Safo, is an accomplished pilot who also built a respectable reputation as CEO of Kantanka Automobile. These are not people who came from deprivation. They are products of privilege, opportunity, education, and influence.

Yet here we are.
A Father's Day overshadowed by reports of gunshots in a family grieving a father; one of Ghana's greatest inventors and philanthropists. Perhaps Solomon had already seen this picture thousands of years ago. As he contemplated his own mortality, he wrote:

"Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? Yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity." Ecclesiastes 2:18-19

How profound!
You spend your entire life building an empire; sacrificing sleep, denying yourself comfort! You labour for decades. Yet the one question you can never answer remains;

"Who exactly am I leaving all these things to? Wise people or fools? Builders or destroyers?"

All across Kumasi and many cities in Ghana, you will see magnificent mansions gradually deteriorating because nobody can agree on who owns what. In places like Asokwa, Nhyiaeso, Atasemanso, and elsewhere, properties worth millions are trapped in endless litigation because fathers died without leaving behind families capable of managing what they built.

The situation becomes even more tragic where several women and children are involved. The hatred among stepchildren, often inherited from the rivalries and resentments of competing mothers is so intense that it almost defies explanation.

They hate each other to the point where nobody is willing to enjoy or preserve the father's legacy. Everyone would rather destroy the inheritance than allow another person to benefit from it.

And so, once again, we are confronted with a painful question:

"Would you continue to spend your entire life building an estate that eventually becomes the reason your children destroy themselves?" ENIGMA!

All we men must not continue to live oblivious of the consequences of our actions while we are gone. Would you continue to waste your years building and raising an estate that would be the basis your children get wasted? Well, since we don't know whether the children or people we leave behind will be foolish or wise enough in their handling of our estate, I have 4 proposals to help fathers especially, guard against the ongoing madness with the Safos:

1. The Greatest Gift to Give Your Family Is Christ

Before houses, before lands, before bank accounts and investments, give your family Christ. The Spirit of Christ is fundamentally the spirit of love. It teaches humility, sacrifice, forgiveness, service, and regard for others. It teaches children that life is not a competition against their siblings but a collective journey where everyone rises together.

Children who genuinely grow in Christ learn to celebrate one another's successes. They learn stewardship instead of entitlement. They learn that relationships are more valuable than possessions and that people matter more than properties.

Many men are obsessed with leaving assets behind. Yet very few are deliberate about leaving behind values.

A house without Christ eventually becomes a battleground. Just as an inheritance without Christ becomes fuel for greed.

But a family founded on Christ becomes a blessing to generations. Such families become lights in their communities, and people speak of them not because of their riches but because of the character and unity they exhibit.

2. Teach Your Children the Value of Human Life

One of the greatest responsibilities of parenthood is teaching children that life is not all about them. Children learn this primarily by observation. If they see you value other people, they too will learn to value people. If they see you helping others, respecting others, and sacrificing for others, they too will develop a sense of moral responsibility toward society.

But if you spend your life teaching your children that only their interests matter, that only their comfort counts, and that everyone else is beneath them, do not be surprised when they become prisoners of selfishness.

The tragedy of selfishness is that it eventually destroys even the selfish person.

A child who grows up believing the world revolves around him struggles to share, struggles to cooperate, struggles to forgive, and eventually struggles to maintain meaningful relationships.

A father who isolates his children from society is not protecting them. He is preparing them for social bankruptcy.

Ironically, Apostle Kwadwo Safo invested enormously in community development and national progress. His life reminds us that no family exists in isolation. We all belong to a larger society.

So imagine the future of families where children are deliberately raised to despise others, mock people's struggles, and think they owe society nothing. Such children eventually become spectacles unto themselves.

3. Give Your Children an Education That Can Outlive Your Estate

Many fathers are dying under the burden of loans and financial pressures simply to construct gigantic houses. But pause and think.

The world your children will inherit is not the world you know today. Technology is changing lifeclasss. Preferences are changing. Communities are changing.

Just like the many abandoned mansions in the rich neighborhoods, the mansion that cost you your health and peace may be considered outdated by your children in a few years.

Some may never even want to live in it.
Education, however, never becomes obsolete. A child equipped with knowledge, skills, values, and adaptability can build ten more houses if necessary.

Your greatest inheritance should therefore be competence, not concrete structures. Raise children who can thrive with or without your estate.

Raise children whose future does not depend on your properties. And raise children who can create wealth rather than merely inherit and waste it.

4. Build Others
As we say in Twi: "Wo sum borɔdeɛ a, sum kwadu."

To wit, as you hold up the plantain, hold up the bananas too.

Life is not straightforward.
You simply do not know who will matter most in your season of need. Many people have lived long enough to regret neglecting others simply because they were not blood relatives.

I know wealthy people who eventually handed over their properties to househelps who stood faithfully by them. I know people who gave everything to their children only to watch those same children descend into addiction and self-destruction. I know parents whose children relocated abroad and never looked back, leaving them lonely and sick.

You just cannot tell.
The child you are sacrificing everything for may become foolish through circumstances. Rather, the stranger you once helped may become your greatest source of comfort.

This is why we must be very careful how we treat people while we still have influence and capacity. Human beings are not investments to be measured by blood relationships alone.

Sometimes, God preserves your future through people you never expected.

Therefore, by all means, build your children! Give them the best!

But build others too!
Lift your family, but do not forget humanity. Because life has a way of humbling our assumptions.

At the end of the day, Solomon was right. We labour, we build, we acquire, and we accumulate. Yet one question remains beyond our control:

"Will those who come after us be wise enough to preserve what we built or foolish enough to destroy it?"

Perhaps the answer lies not in the size of the inheritance we leave behind, but in the character of the people we leave behind to inherit it.

Thanks for reading! Leave a comment let me know what you think!

Look out for my upcoming book on Vessels of Honor And Dishonor!

Cheers!
Michael A. Sarfo-Kantanka
maskant25@yahoo.com

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