Is Asantehene the Real King of Galamsey?

Ordinarily, I wouldn't give a hoot who was considered to be the richest African monarch or the poorest. But my attention was unusually drawn to this particular news article captioned "Otumfuo Osei-Tutu II Is Africa's 5th Richest King; Worth $10 million" (MyJoyOnline.com 6/4/14) because I found it to be rather pathetic and curiously demeaning in some inexplicable ways. After all, which proud Ghanaian of bona fide Akan stock ever heard of the Asantehene, the legendary Emperor of the storied Kingdom of Gold, playing second-bananas to any other monarch on the African continent?

What piqued my interest and curiosity more than all else, however, regarded the sources of the wealth of these remarkable traditional rulers. For one, I expected King Mswati III, of Swaziland (not to be confused with Switzerland), whose younger brother was once my African History student at Indiana State University, Terre Haute, to be considerably wealthier than the Asantehene. King Mswati also controls a whole country, however smaller in size than Asanteman, as an "Absolute Monarch." The Asantehene, of course, like all Akan traditional rulers, is a "Constitutional Monarch." And like King Mswati until very recently, King Mohammed VI, of the Kingdom of Morocco, was an absolute monarch. In the postcolonial era, the Asantehene has become a largely ceremonial monarch whose power, influence and reverence essentially derive from the glorious history of his dynasty.

I also expected the two Nigerian monarchs economically ranked above the Asantehene by Forbes, the globally renowned American wealth tracker, investor and investment consultant, to be exactly in the positions in which they had been listed; after all, Nigeria just got named the largest national economy and/or market on the African continent, beating a relatively far more industrialized post-Apartheid South Africa into second place. Besides, the oil wealth of Africa's most populous country is the vintage stuff of legend. Over all, also, I was not the least bit impressed because, quite predictably, the profiles and magnitude of the wealth of these African monarchs closely mirrored the tradtional racial stereotype that has the white corporate executive and many a ceremonial monarch comfortably positioned at the apex of the global human political, economic and sociocultural pyramid.

This picture, all-too-perfectly in synch with the preceding stereotype, also reflected the fact of Black Africa's monarchs' remarkably lagging behind their paler-complected counterparts Up-North and eastward as well. And I am quite certain that if North African countries like Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Mauritania were still ruled by monarchs, these monarchs would have readily been found to be substantially wealthier than their darker brethren. Of course, it is very tempting to rope in the usual Bete-Blanche, the white-imperialist predator of the West a la ideological liberalism and faux-Afrocentric essentialism of the kind that I sadly and misguidedly endured at the Kongi Institute for some four or five of the most intellectually fecund years of my life, curricular-wise, that is.

But there is a serious problem here; and that problem may be more psychological and, perhaps, even much more psychical than anything else. What also more than fascinates me (actually mesmerizes me), if also because it scorchingly sheds an uncomfortable light on the sort of personalities that Ghanaians have, and have had, as our indigenous rulers, is the fact that of all the five richest African monarchs listed by Forbes, it is only the Asantehene who appears to have a sizeable chunk of his wealth stashed outside his own country. Still, in terms of his wealth and stature, the estimated $10 million worth of the Asantehene could be aptly said to be tantamount to a proverbial fighting words on the part of Forbes. And I really don't know the mode or method by which such decidedly puny, and almost embarrassing worth/wealth, assessment was arrived at.

But what I can say, strictly based on the investment profile provided by Forbes, is that the Asantehene, after all, may not be the modern-day King Solomon that many a passionately partisan subject of his would have the rest of us believe. Morocco's King Mohammed's estimated networth of $2 billion is mostly in the form of stock-market investments and banking, while the estimated networth of the two Nigerian monarchs, namely, Oba Obateri Akinnitan, $300 million, and Oba Okunnade Sijuwade, $75 million, are heavily invested in the oil and the construction business. Likewise, King Mswati's wealth is also reported to be in the form of high-end business investments.

How about the "Almighty" Asantehene? Well, we are told that a decade before Barima Kwaku Duah ascended the Golden Stool, he had established a company called Transpomech Ghana (Ltd) that had made a$12-million profit in the sale of mining equipment "to several industrial companies in Ghana." Whoever said that the Okyenhene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin II, was the Dean of the Galamsey University most likely never heard of Lancaster House's own Barima Kwaku Duah. And just what has all this got to do with the Mahama Brothers and the Manhyia preelectoral accords? Dear reader, your guess is as good as mine.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Board Member, The Nassau Review
June 4, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

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