“John” Agbeko Must Go!

I could barely contain my anger, when I came across the news report in which the Registrar of Ghana’s Births and Deaths Registry and his professional associates were alleged to have unilaterally prohibited indigenous Ghanaian names like “Nana, Ohenemaa (Ohemmaa), Ohene, Nii, Nene, Fiaga, Togbui and Naa (as in TolonNaa) from being duly registered on birth certificates and/or change-of-name certificates, I presume, because these names of veneration and endearment were, somehow, not real or proper names but titles (See “Minister Leads Births & Deaths Registry to Face Parliament” Citifmonline.com / Modernghana.com 1/26/18).

The fact of the matter is that all names or nominal marks of identification are titles, including the name of Mr. John Yao Agbeko, the Registrar at the Accra Headquarters of the Births and Deaths Registry. According to the news report, Mr. Agbeko claims that Act 301 (1965) empowers the administrators of the Births and Deaths Registry to make decisions regarding the kinds of names that qualify to be deemed to be registrable or classified as legitimate. I am enthused by the decision of the Parliamentary Minority Leader, Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, to have both Mr. Agbeko and the Minister of Local Government appear before a full-sitting of the House and explain when such a patently anti-Ghanaian and neocolonialist policy of the proscription of indigenous names was adopted, and for what purpose, because it clearly appears that some taxpayer-salaried civil servants are on a genocidal mission against the freedom and integrity of our right to cultural self-expression and identification.

This is especially preposterous, in view of the fact that we even have a soccer/football club in the country that is registered in the name of a Saudi monarch in our premier league division. It is called King Faisal or some such outlandish name. I have had occasion to question this inglorious and inescapably embarrassing exhibition of cultural self-alienation and caught quite a bit of flak for it. In the equally inexcusably criminal case of the Births and Deaths Registry, what we have here is a culpable instance of “psychocide” or “menticide,” the deliberate and systematic attempt to literally kill the self-worth and mental and psychological health of an otherwise proud and sanely and healthily self-loving and humanistic Ghanaian citizenry.

If Mr. Agbeko supposes for even a split-second that his first Euro-colonially imposed name of “John” has more cultural organicity and legitimacy than names like “Osagyefo, Otumfuo, Maame, Naa, Nii and Fiaga,” then he needs to immediately consult with a psychiatrist. Better yet, the man ought to be summarily removed from his post. What Mr. Agbeko and his associates at the Births and Deaths Registry stand accused of doing for quite a considerable while now, is, in fact, far worse than the crime that got Dr. Kwame AkuffoAnoff-Ntow fired from the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) as the Director-General of our national broadcaster.

To hear renowned lawyer-activist Ace Anan Ankomah say it, there is absolutely nothing in the contents of Act 301 (1965) or the 1992 Republican Constitution that empowers the taxpayer-salaried administrators of the Births and Deaths Registry to decide for Ghanaian citizens, what names to give their children, wards and themselves. Indeed, the only such case that we have on record in the West African sub-region occurred in Togo, where the late President GnassingbeEyadema officially proscribed the use of European names. But this executive order was much healthier, far more intelligent and morally and psychologically constructive, therapeutic and progressive than what Mr. Agbeko and his colleagues have evidently been about at the Births and Deaths Registry.

Is this one of the legion morally and psychologically degenerative legacies bequeathed Ghanaians by the so-called Rawlings Revolution? You see, I never felt comfortable in our acutely psychologically fragile milieu to have a Scottish-named Mr. Rawlings rule our roost, as it were. It was one of the most poisonous legacies of British colonial imperialism, and I hope we wouldn’t have to deal with such cancerous political tumors in the near future.

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