Agyeman Badu Akosa Is Too Temperamentally Partisan To Be Enstooled Okwawumanhene

I am not on the ground and have not been for the past three decades and counting, and so I cannot claim to have any first-hand knowledge or information at my fingertips about the widely reported chaotic events that occurred in the wake of the recent enstoolment of Prof. Agyeman Badu Akosa as Paramount King of the Okwawu Traditional Area (See “Riot in Kwahu-Abene Over Enstoolment of Prof. Badu Akosa as Chief” Kasapafmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 5/6/17). But I have a long-cultivated great interest in the affairs of Okwawuman, partly because I recently discovered to my pleasant surprise that my own father’s maternal ancestry hailed from the Amuana-Praso royal family, by way of Asante-Dwaben and Adansi-Fomena. Then, I also have a paternal forebear and unarguably modern Ghana’s greatest statesman and foremost advocate of democratic governance, namely, Dr. J. B. Danquah, who was born in the great Okwawuman cultural township of Bepong in December 1895.

Legend has it that Dr. Danquah’s father had at one time been named the Okwawuman State Drummer. He would later assume the same title and diligently and inimitably render similar services to Ofori-Panyin-Fie, or the Paramount King of Akyem-Abuakwa. Then, I also have ancestors from my mother’s part of the family who schooled in Okwawu between the late 1890s and the first two decades of the 20^th century; and, of course, an uncle or two who did the same.

All these relatives had schooled at Okwawu-Abetifi, the Nifa, or Right-Wing, Division of Okwawuman and the current proverbial Eye-of-the-Storm against the enstoolment of the former Director-General of the Ghana Medical Services, as the most powerful and/or influential traditional ruler of the putatively most commercially prosperous traditional polity in the country, if memory serves me accurately.

The Okwawu people also boast of one of the greatest singer-composer-band leaders and highlife musicians in Ghana, namely, Nana PSK Ampadu, I, of Okwawu-Obo. I believe “Paa Steele” also has close connections to the Obo royal family. And, oh, I forgot to also add that yours truly attended the Okwawu-Nkwatia-located St. Peter’s Secondary School (PERSCO), presently renamed St. Peter’s Senior High School. I have also spent enough off-school holidays or vacations at Abetifi to easily qualify me to be named a bona fide son of that magnificent township, which is also the paternal ancestral provenance of my Kyebi Dankyi cousins.

Anyway, it took me quite a while to peek behind the news headlines, because I had absolutely no idea, whatsoever, that the infamous street-brawling stentorian son of Asante-Mampong’s DC Akosa had been born by an Okwawu mother. Likewise, Prof. Akosa is not widely known to associate himself with the Okwawu community in the country in any shape or form, at least not publicly that I know of. Which very may well explain why some of the leading figures of the King-Makers Division of Okwawuman are reported to be up in arms against the allegedly secret enstoolment of Prof. Akosa as their Paramount King just this past Thursday.

I am, for my part, personally flabbergasted by the actions of those behind the early Thursday dawn’s enstoolment of the man who is not known to have either been born or raised in the Okwawu State as the new Omanhane of the Okwawu Traditional Area. You see, far gone are the days when one’s maternal provenance, or sheer maternity, was reckoned to be an adequate qualification for enstooling one as a chief, let alone a Paramount Chief or King. It also took me quite a considerable while to peel underneath the media headlines announcing his enstoolment because, somehow, I had knee-jerkily assumed that it was one of those “slap-sticky” enstoolments like Nkosohene – or the Chief-of-Progress – which are routinely conferred on philanthropic European and American tourists.

The fact of the matter is that having closely followed his decidedly rambunctious political activities with the rump-Convention People’s Party (r-CPP) for at least a decade, and a very controversial one at that, I have come to the definitive conclusion that Prof. Agyeman Badu Akosa woefully lacks the temperamental polish and nobility to qualify him to be enstooled as a major chieftain in any part of the country. But, of course, I make all the foregoing observations studiously bearing in mind the fact that it is the judgment call of the traditional King-Makers and the good people of Okwawuman that matters most, not my own.

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