Peace or War, Dagbon Must Be Brought Along!

Finally, the Biggest Chief in Ghana has spoken and so the show must go on. I am here, of course, referring to The Asantehene, His Royal Majesty, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu, II. And his speech, or rather official announcement, has to do with the apparently deliberate and mischievous interruption of the funerary rites for Yaa-Naa Yakubu Andani, II, the Supreme Overlord of Dagbon, or the Dagomba Kingdom, who was savagely decapitated, together with at least some 40 members of his courtiers some 16 years ago, in the heat of one of the running age-old feuds between the two Royal Gates of the kingdom, namely, the fraternal Abudu and Andani families. It appears that somebody or a group of factionalists who did not want any semblance of lasting peace in this ancient Modern-Ghanaian kingdom decided to bloodily call a screeching halt to the process of multiple funerary rites for several deceased Dagbon Overlords whose transitional rites were never duly performed, because the two lineages of the Dagbon Royal Family did not seem to be capable of bringing their apocalyptic Shakespearean feud to an end (See “Yendi: Yaa Na’s Funeral to Continue Despite Clashes” Modernghana.com 1/12/19).

This is not the very first time that a Committee of Eminent Ghanaian Chiefs and/or Citizens has been established by the Government-of-the-Day to resolve the protracted and seemingly intractable feud between the two contending claimant families to the Dagbon Skin, as the throne/stool of the Dagomba monarchy is called. On Friday, January 11, violent hostilities between the two Dagbon royal families erupted, once more, resulting in the death of at least one person and seriously threatening to derail the entire peace process which is headed by the Asantehene. Fortunately, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu, II, put his two feet down, literally speaking, and announced that bloody feuding or not, the scandalously jejune and nihilistic adults of the Dagbon Royal Family and, indeed, the entire Dagbon Kingdom, needed to promptly step aside and allow the lives and the inalienable right of the kingdom’s innocent youths to democratic freedom to prevail. Under the present arrangement, the funeral of the last Yaa-Naa to be ritually transitioned, Yaa-Naa Yakubu Andani, II, will be brought to a successful and definitive conclusion on Friday, January 18, 2019. Shortly thereafter, a new Dagbon Yaa-Naa will be enskinned after the proper consultations of the kingmakers have been held.

The Asantehene’s laudable and firm decision to enforce the observation of the Roadmap to Lasting Peace for Dagbon must be heartily celebrated. But it also clearly appears that in order to ensure the establishment of lasting peace and security in that troubled spot of the country, thorough investigations will need to be conducted to ascertain the real cause/causes of the renewed hostilities. Once the latter has been impartially established, the culprits or criminal suspects will have to be promptly brought to justice. As of this writing, the Inspector-General of the Ghana Police Service (IGP), Mr. David Asante Apeatu, was widely reported to have arrived in the Dagbon royal capital of Yendi to knock heads with the members of the Northern Regional Security Council (REGSEC) and other stakeholders in the region to ensure the prevalence of lasting peace.

We hope that the major players in the Dagbon Crisis fully appreciate the fact that this is the practical era of the Global Village, in which the destinies of all Ghanaians and, indeed, all the residents and inhabitants of the West African sub-region are inextricably intertwined. The leaders of Dagbon can no longer continue to allow themselves or be allowed to make the kingdom the one running sore of Fourth-Republican Ghana that stubbornly and adamantly refuses to heal. We all need to move regally together into the new era of global peace and prosperity. There is absolutely no other alternative, besides death and total destruction.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
January 13, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]