Akyem Mafia Glorify Komfo Anokye

A couple of weeks ago, I told the audience of the Klasik Radio weekly current affairs program of which I am one of five or six regular panelists, that it was the people of Okyeman-mu, in particular Akyem-Abuakwa, and Akuapem-Kyerepong or Guan who fashioned the Great Asante Nation into what it is and has become presently. That may very well explain why on the 40^th anniversary celebration of the enstoolment of the recently deceased Okuapemanhene, Oseadeeyo Addo-Dankwa, III, His Majesty, The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu, II, had not only paid a courtesy call on the traditional younger brother of the Okyenhene, but continued on the brief trip that took The Asantehene to the small township of Awukugua, or Awuku’s Stool or Market, the birthplace and ancestral matrix of the Great Okomfo Anokye, the legendary undisputed co-founder of the Asante Empire.

Today, thanks to the ironic shenanigans of the late President Kwame Nkrumah, the Asante Nation is geographically only a small fraction of its original size and identity at the height of its power and glory. The power and influence of The Asantehene, however, continues to be global in scope even to this day. Well, where the “Akyem Mafia” factor into the equation of the creation and development of Asanteman, or the Asante Nation, regards the fact that it was Okyeman that fiercely fought off the Great Akwamu and for the liberation of the original inhabitants of Okuapeman, the Guans, who are today commonly known as the Kyerepong, or the post-slavery people. Legend has it that the Guans of the Okuapem Mountains, actually Scarp, used to be called the Kyereton(g) people, or the slaves. For they were for quite a considerable while at the commercial mercy of the Akwamu people and their very powerful nation. It was after the thorough and decisive routing of the Akwamu by the Akyem that the Guan attained their freedom and sovereignty. That was in the mid-to-late 1600s.

And so in a practical sense, Okomfo Anokye is the veritable product of Okyeman’s political genius, just as the Great Okomfo Anokye is indisputably the co-founder of the Asante Nation. The greatest woman in the history and military memory of the Asante Nation, Obaahemaa, or Queenmother, Nana Yaa Asantewaa, was also the sister of the Okyenhene. And so it comes as absolutely no news to me at all, that it would take the wife of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, a bona fide scion of Okyeman, and the First Lady of Ghana, Mrs. Rebecca Akufo-Addo (néé Griffiths-Randolph), to complete the long abandoned Mother And Baby Unit (MBU) maternity ward of the Okomfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH). That was some 44 years ago. Actually, the bigger and main project still remains to be completed. But it is quite interesting to observe that during the 8-year tenure of President John Agyekum-Kufuor, a bona fide scion of Kumasi-Manhyia, the majestic heart of Asantemanso, KATH’s MBU never showed up on the national development radar. This, in spite of the fact that Mr. Kufuor, it was, who designed and implemented the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

Well, the Akan have a maxim that: “Man came to do some of it, not all of it.” Finally, Ghana’s second-largest health center gets to be called a full-fledged hospital. And for this, of course, Asanteman and the rest of Ghana owe Mrs. Rebecca Akufo-Addo a considerable debt of gratitude. For it was the Rebecca Akufo-Addo Foundation that went beyond the proverbial call of duty to underwrite most of the expenditure of KATH’s Mother And Baby Unit, together with the equally indispensable contribution of another Akyem Mafia Capo and Corporate Proprietor-Director of the Multimedia Group of Companies, Mr. Kwasi Twum. It was a wish and a desire that was destined to be fulfilled by the man whom the onetime most powerful Asante-descended political giants of the New Patriotic Party really loved to hate. May God save our souls from the nihilistic and internecine tendencies of one another. May God make us better human beings for the rest of whatever may be left of our present lives, but most especially in the Afterlife. God Bless Our Homeland Ghana, and Make Our Nation Great And Strong Again. For we are suffering and hurting in this Trumpian Shithole that Ghana has become.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
January 20, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]