GHANA’S TRADITIONAL RULERS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO FIGHT YESTERDAY’S BATTLES TODAY!

Having bequeathed an economic legacy amounting to a poisoned chalice to his successor, it appears that we are experiencing yet some more negative fallout from President Kufuor’s divisive presidency. Throughout his tenure, our former president worked tirelessly to give the world the unfortunate impression that somehow his tribal Chief was the de facto sovereign of a nation within the Ghanaian nation-state.  

 In furtherance of that destabilizing agenda, the entire machinery of state was mobilized, to promote that absurd legal-fantasy of the former president’s tribal Chiefs. Thus emboldened, many of them conveniently forgot the fact that Ghana happens to be a unitary republic and a nation of diverse-ethnicity – in which all the nation’s ethnic groups have an equal stake.

Sadly, unfathomable greed made many of them strike an unholy alliance with Kufuor & Co in the eight years that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) held power for – and together, they exploited our national economy for their own benefit: with a degree of ruthlessness seldom seen in Ghana’s chequered history, thus far. 

Now that they no longer call the shots in the affairs of our country, it appears that some of them are prepared to hold our newly-elected leaders to ransom – and have chosen their moment in a matter full of the most egregious of falsehoods: which is now being deliberately used by them as a trial of strength, to see what they can get away with and precisely how far they can go in confrontations with the incumbent president.

 That outrage must not be allowed to succeed – and all the parties involved in both outstanding matters in the Tuabodom case must be tried in the law courts in Sunyani.

The outstanding matter from the NPP era involving the Tuabodom Chief, and the matter that took him to Manhyia recently, must both be heard in the law courts without any interference whatsoever from outside parties. Perhaps some Chiefs might have been able to get Regional Police Commanders and Regional Ministers removed from their positions in the past – but they must never be allowed to do so under this regime too. Period.

With respect, our elected leaders must not allow traditional rulers in Ghana to destabilize our country under any circumstances. Chiefs in our country must be made to understand clearly that the Ghanaian nation-state is a Leviathan with the power of life and death over all who reside within its borders – and that those who defy its laws do so at the pain of imprisonment or death.

Should a Chief boldly informing the world through the media that he will kidnap a fellow Chief – if his unreasonable demands are not met by the government in power – not be charged with making unlawful demands likely to cause fear and panic in the general public, dear reader?

The fact of the matter is that Chiefs in Ghana owe their exalted positions in Ghanaian society solely to the fact that they are the lucky beneficiaries of inherited privilege – in a nation aspiring to be a meritocracy: And as even little primary school children in Ghana are aware, inherited privilege is the biggest enemy of meritocracy.

Over the years, we have seen savage tribal conflicts erupting across Africa from time to time – in which millions of our fellow Africans have been permanently maimed and others killed. Our elected leaders must not allow Chiefs, who were not elected to their elevated positions in society by ordinary people, to throw Ghana into chaos under any circumstances – and attempt to hold our elected leaders to ransom on top of that too.

In case it escapes some of our Chiefs, let us remind them that were those of their pre-colonial predecessors from our feudal past, whose battlefield acts of savagery won them such renown in the slave-raiding days, to repeat those abominable acts of cruelty today, they would be candidates for the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague.

What is the difference between those callous historical figures that some of our Chiefs are so proud of, and present-day monsters like the Joseph Koneys of Ugandan infamy, I ask, dear reader?

This is the 21^st century ICT age, not the dark days of our feudal past. Chiefs in Ghana must not think that just because our nation is a society full of moral cowards who are afraid to criticize important personages who act recklessly and foolishly, it means that no one will dare criticize them when the cohesion and the stability of the enterprise Ghana is at stake. Enough is enough.

Not all Ghanaians are like those spineless and sycophantic individuals (with a serf-mentality!) who daily fan the egos of the megalomaniacs and tribal-supremacists who live and work in Chiefs’ palaces across our country (in all the ten regions of Ghana!).

Ghana’s independent-minded and de-tribalized citizens are thoroughly fed up with the absurd antics of Chiefs in our homeland Ghana. If we must tolerate them for cultural reasons, why on earth do we not simply then decide that henceforth, we will assume that all Ghanaians are “royals” – and proceed to change the position of president into that of an elected “monarch” of Ghana (Ghana Omanpanin or Ghana Omanobaapanin), in our constitution?

Would that not put all those tiresome megalomaniacs, who think that their birthright is to rule Nkrumah’s Ghana till the very end of time, in their proper place, finally, I ask, dear reader? Our elected leaders must understand that if we are to have peace in our country, they must always deal firmly with errant Chiefs who break the law, in our homeland Ghana. A word to the wise…

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