President Mills Must Not Repeat Former President Kufuor's Worst Mistake!

Hardly any ordinary Ghanaians were astonished by recent news reports that some of our former rulers (who were past masters of the art and science of Kokofu-football politricks), allowed our diplomatic passports to be so debased, that they were distributed like confetti – and handed over to their kith and kin as well as to scores of their cronies.

Their tribal-supremacist nature was plain for all to see, in their insistence that their favourite tribal Chiefs be described as “Kings” in the diplomatic passports they were given. Yet, those well-educated imbeciles knew perfectly well that this happens to be a unitary Republic – in which no kingdoms actually exist (except in the rather vivid imagination of the megalomaniacs amongst their tribal-supremacist traditional rulers).

Former President Kufuor (our erstwhile “Hypocrite-in-Chief”) will doubtless go down in history, as a politician who divided this country like no other elected Ghanaian leader has, since we gained our independence. The reason is not hard to fathom.

His tenure more or less coincided with the occupancy of the “Golden Stool” by the most politically ambitious of the modern-day Asantehenes – whose harshest critics say, somehow thinks he was born to recover the sovereign power, which his predecessors lost, when the British colonized our country.

When Mr. Kweku Baako recently described former President Kufuor as the most successful Busia-Danquah leader, ever, thus far, perhaps even he did not realise just what a profound statement he had just made.

Incidentally, the “road-to-Damascus” conversion of Mr. Baako – from an Nkrumaist and Socialist, into Ghana’s foremost spokesperson for, and staunchest defender of, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and all it stands for – is one of the tragedies of our time for Ghanaian progressives: for, he, like his friend and brother, Mr. Kwesi Pratt, has one of the most incisive minds in Ghanaian journalism today. But I digress.

There are many of former President Kufuor’s critics, who say that in the short space of eight years he was able to fulfill a greater part of the secret Akan tribal-supremacist agenda, of the notorious National Liberation Movement (NLM), and its various post-independence offshoots.

From its very beginning, the NLM tried desperately hard to break up our country along tribal lines, and physically eliminate Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah – in order to achieve the “ethnocentric-triumphalist” ends its members sought for themselves, when the British colonialists finally departed our shores.

The tragedy for our nation is that Kufuor’s presidency more or less coincided with the early years of the occupancy of the Golden Stool, by the successor to Otumfuo Opoku Ware 11 (a humble gentleman whom many regard as the greatest of the modern-day Asantehene’s).

Unlike that great traditional ruler, the present incumbent, sadly, completely misunderstands the role of the modern-day Asantehene in a 21st century African nation-state that is a unitary Republic – and which is also a multi-party democracy that aspires to be a meritocracy. Inherited privilege, as every little primary school child in Ghana today knows, is the greatest enemy of any meritocracy.

It is no accident that the gentleman, who before occupying the Golden Stool was known in private life as Barima Kweku Dua, was sponsored by Baffuor Akoto – who was one of the pillars behind that ruthless political entity, which used terrorism as a political weapon, the NLM.

That is why it was such an intolerable situation for most progressives in Ghana that during the tenure of the NPP, President Kufuor literally hijacked the whole machinery of state, to benefit a group of tribal-supremacist Chiefs – who owed their stations in life to inherited privilege: and were led by a man nominated to his position by his own mother.

The outrage, for most Ghanaian progressives, is that throughout his tenure, President Kufuor went to such great lengths to give the world the unfortunate impression, that somehow his tribal Chief was a de facto sovereign,

Yet even the most obtuse of ignoramuses in the law know that such thoughts are treasonable: and totally unacceptable to any Ghanaian patriot who believes in the rule of law and in constitutional democracy, and regards this country as the land of diverse-ethnicity, which Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah succeeded in moulding together into a united nation, whose citizens share a common destiny.

It is the hope of all Ghanaian progressives that the new administration of President Mills will not tolerate any traditional ruler carrying on in this country as if he or she were a sovereign. That is totally unacceptable to Ghanaian nationalists– as there is no state within a state in Nkrumah’s Ghana.

Why should one set of traditional rulers in Ghana be singled out and given preferential treatment by our elected leaders – when our country is literally awash with equally eminent traditional rulers whose pre-colonial feudal ancestors also once commanded vanquishing armies and had large kingdoms to rule too?

Even if former President Kufuor’s tribal Chiefs are the descendants of the most powerful rulers the world has ever known, what does that matter to the freedom-loving citizens of today’s Ghana?

Are they not a sovereign people who most certainly have no wish to exchange their constitutional right to elect their nation's  leaders - who are ultimately accountable to them after all - in free and fair elections every four years, for the dubious privilege of becoming the serfs of men and women (often of questionable character) who owe their leadership positions in society solely to their family backgrounds?

Inherited privilage is the worst enemy of meritocracy - and we must rid our nation of its baleful influence: if we are to ever progress and turn our homeland Ghana into an African equivalent of the egalitarian society of Scandinavia. President Mills must certainly not repeat President Kufuor’s most egregious mistake. He would be wise to have an arms-length relationship with Chiefs in Nkrumah's Ghana.