The Wishful History Of These “Ashanti” Boys

The original caption of this column was “Asante Supremacy Rears Its Ugly Head Again.” But I decided not to use it because it sounded too politically and emotionally volatile and loaded and would have unnecessarily interfered with the burden or subject of this discourse. First of all, I want “Dr. Nana” Agyenim-Boateng, the President of the so-called Concerned Youth of Ashanti (CYA), to get this message loud and clear: that the foundation and establishment of Okyeman, in particular the Forest Kingdom of Akyem-Abuakwa, precedes the foundation and establishment of Asanteman as a formidable traditional kingdom and later empire.

It is a historical fact that any scholar or historian with remarkable modicum of credibility and authority can only ignore canonical truths of historical reality at the risk of been subjected to condign ridicule or becoming a laughing stock. To be certain, the Asante Kingdom is one of the youngest of its kind to be established by the Akan people. Akwamu is perhaps the oldest in living memory. If I have my facts correctly, Asanteman is only older than Okwawuman/Kwahuman. What this clearly implies, of course, is not that the people we now globally describe as “Asantes” or “Ashantis,” for the apparently intellectually stunted likes of Dr. Agyenim-Boateng, did not exist in practical historical terms.

Rather, what it means is that in terms of the acquisition of the knowledge and skills required for the establishment of a viable, civilized modern polity, the way we presently know it, Asanteman is the bona fide son of Okyeman or Akyem-Abuakwa. Akyem is immediately preceded by Adansi and Denkyira, the latter of whom held Asante in a veritable status of servitude or slavery. This aspect of our history is a bit complicated, but I can neatly sum it up by noting that it was the Akyem who defeated the Denkyira and repatriated their enslaved Dwaben/Juaben royal kinsmen and women. If he wants to educate himself further on this subject, let the President of the so-called Concerned Youth of Ashanti (CYA) study the history of Akyem-Asiakwa and Okyeman, in general, and cultivate a decent modicum of humility.

Now, it is absolutely pointless to make such vacuous, to speak much less of a puerile, statement as the following: “There’s no title as ‘Okyehene’[sic]” debatable in any forum of reasonably well-educated Ghanaians. But since he has called for it, I am forced, for the sake of posterity and the record books, to come down to the obviously clinically retarded level of Dr. Agyenim-Boateng and his Concerned Youth of Ashanti group to set the records straight. First of all, the validity and/or legitimacy of either the monarchical title of “Okyenhene” or “Kwaebibiremhene” does not owe anything, whatsoever, to the Ministry of Chieftaincy Affairs, which was only recently established in Ghana’s Fourth Republic to facilitate the codification and thus legally and statutorily streamline the operation of the central apparatus of our collective cultural identity or identities.

And yes, the title of “Okyenhene” exists because Akyem-Abuakwa is the oldest and largest of the Akyem States, whose monarch or Paramount King granted land rights for the establishment of the present-day traditional states of Akyem-Kotoku and Akyem-Bosome. It is fundamentally these two much smaller and Abuakwa-invaginated or engulfed states – the way the Republic of Senegal has been to The Gambia – that Dr. Agyenim-Boateng may have been referring to, when he stated in his radio interview, only the report of which I have read, that the Akyem States migrated from Asanteman or the Asante Kingdom. There is absolutely no way for Akyem-Abuakwa, the original Okyeman, to have emerged out of Asanteman when, in reality, Asanteman did not exist at the time. Our elders have metaphorically or proverbially warned that: “When you poke underneath the eyes of a corpse, you are bound to espy a ghost.”

Indeed, were he familiar with the erudite and authoritative Cultural-Anthropology of Dr. J. B. Danquah, notably his perennial classic titled “Akan Laws and Customs and the Akyem-Abuakwa Constitution” (London: Frank Cass, 1928), Dr. Agyenim-Boateng would have “heard” the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics loudly and clearly observe that the “Akyem Spirit” or temperament abhors the sort of imperialistic tendencies that make the Asantehene, for example, an “Otumfuo,” the preeminent and all-powerful in the Asante Nation or Kingdom. The Okyeman motto is as follows: “We owe allegiance to no one, and no one owes allegiance to us.” We are fiercely independent both severally, or individually, and collectively. In other words, if the “Asagyefo” of Akyem-Abuakwa had been as politically dictatorial or domineering in their conduct like their Asante neighbors and kinsmen, not only Kotoku and Bosome but New Juaben, as well, would have been incorporated into the Akyem-Abuakwa State.

Ultimately, anybody as stolidly arrogant as “Dr. Nana” Agyenim-Boateng may find it too “rocket-sciency” to fully appreciate the foregoing simple historical facts. But, of course, it is not too late for this presumptuous and imperious Asante Supremacist to cultivate a decent sense of humility and healthily enrich his mind and soul.

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