Media Spotlight: Dagbon Crisis Is Better Left to the Fomenters Themselves

The last tragic crisis to hit Ghana’s second-most-significant royal family or group of families was in the year 2002, when the paramount king of Yendi and the Dagbon Traditional Area, Ya-Na Yakubu Andani, II, was globally reported to have been savagely decapitated in his Gbewaa Palace, alongside of some 40 members of his courtiers. Since then, the leaders of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), beginning with former President John Agyekum-Kufuor, have been vigorously and literally working around the clock to restore lasting peace to Dagbon. But now it clearly appears that short of foreign intervention or mediation, perhaps from the African Union (AU) or the Conflict-Resolution Council or Committee of the United Nations’ Security Council (UN-SC), the key players in the half-century-old Dagbon Chieftaincy Dispute may be better off left to solve their own disputes and problems, as has been the case with all the other traditional polities and sub-polities in the country.

In the latest of their chronically nauseating conniption, the Andani Gate, so-called, faction of the two-gated Dagbon royal family has officially announced that it is withdrawing from the committee headed by the country’s most significant and powerful monarch, to wit, The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu, II, that has been strenuously working to bring lasting peace to the Dagbon Traditional Area. The leaders of the Andani Gate, according to widespread news reports, stated that their decision to summarily withdraw from the conflict-resolution process was primarily because the committee charged by the Government to bring a definitive solution to their half-century old internecine conflict had demonstrated judicial bias in favor of their rivals, to wit, the Abudu Faction of the Dagbon royal family (See “Dagbon Crisis: Andanis Withdraw from Otumfuo’s Peace Roadmap” Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/15/18).

Now, it is quite obvious that the Andani Faction or Gate of the Dagbon royal family is not interested in finding any lasting solution to its long-raging feud with their Abudu relatives and rivals. I predicate this observation on the fact that, even as former President John Agyekum-Kufuor poignantly noted in the wake of the brutal slaying of Ya-Na Yakubu Andani, II, allegedly by some members and sympathizers of the Abudu Gate, the Dagbon Traditional Area is endowed with no significant natural resources or economic and material wealth that would make The Asantehene or any of the latter’s conflict-mediation associates be motivated to play one Dagbon Gate against the other, with the ultimate objective or aim of gaining access to such mineral wealth or even agricultural resources.

We must also underscore the fact that Ghana has too many fundamental development problems to keep unwisely and regressively fixated on the nihilistic and largely internally fomented problems of a group of seemingly intransigent vainglorious megalomaniacs who do not quite seem to wisely and fully appreciate the imperative need to using whatever limited resources are available to its locality or from the collective wealth of the country to move Dagbon into the hi-tech era of the postindustrial and postmodern world. The renegade Andani Gate also claims that the Osei-Tutu, II,-led conflict-resolution committee has allowed the present legitimately named and enskinned Dagbon Regent to inordinately appropriate the all-too-legitimate title of “Regent of Dagbon.”

In other words, the leaders of the Andani Gate of the Dagbon royal family would rather have Ya-Na Mahamadu Abdulai, IV, whose enskinment-name and/or appellation is “Bolin Lana,” only referred to as the Regent of the Abudu Gate of the Dagbon Royal Family. Now, if this is not plain and inexcusable madness on the part of the Andani Gate’s leaders, I don’t know what else it is. Indeed, not quite long ago, when in one of yours truly’s columns, I called for the Dagbon royal family members to let reason and peace prevail, because as the grandnephew of Nana Akyea-Mensah, of Akyem-Apedwa, I fully appreciated what the members of both Dagbon Gates were going through, an email critic who also claimed to be a member of one of the feuding factions of the Dagbon royal family promised to teach the likes of yours truly an indelible lesson in the offing. If these are not incorrigible savages that we are dealing with, I sincerely don’t know who else we are dealing with.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
December 16, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]