Do Not Appoint Chiefs To Positions In New Administration - It Was Never Part Of The Bargain Voters Struck With The NPP

Years ago, Alan Kyremateng was reported to have said that he would appoint Chiefs to serve in his government - if he won the primaries for selection as the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and went on to win the presidential election.

It put some of us permanently off a brilliant and fantastic human being who without a shadow of doubt would have made a good leader for our nation - for not understanding the importance of not involving Chiefs in our nation's politics: if Ghana is ever to become a meritocracy and progress.

Now, all of a sudden,  it is reported that Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the president-elect, also says that he intends to appoint some chiefs to serve in his government. Incredible. What exactly is going on, one wonders?

One certainly hopes that what one is hearing is just not true - for Mother Ghana's sake.

The question is: What positions exactly will Chiefs serve in the new administration that begins its 4-year tenure on 7th January, 2017 - after the swearing-in of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as President of the Republic of Ghana?

Did the president-elect make it absolutely clear to voters, when he was criss-crossing the country seeking their votes that he would appoint Chiefs to positions in his adminstration, if elected as Ghana's next president?

If he did not spell that out clearly enough, do those who now insist that keeping such a policy from voters amounted to bad faith,  not have a valid point after all - especially as many of those who cast votes for Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo would never have done so: if they had had the slightest inkling that he had such a Dark-Ages governance  idea in mind?

Involving Chiefs in front-role positions in the next NPP administration, if that is the intention, would definitely be a retrograde step. The president-elect must quietly shelve the idea and focus on turning the national economy around instead.

In case it escapes those who are so enamoured with the Chieftaincy institution, it is important that they understand that any society that allows individuals who have the potential to become: world-class engineers; specialist medical doctors; cybersecurity experts; award-winning architects; innovative businesspersons; etc.; etc.; to be permanently enslaved in Chiefs' palaces for the sole purpose of their always being available to fetch and carry for others (including carrying their fellow humans - lucky enough to have been born on the right side of the tracks - on their heads in palanquins), will neither be a just society nor a progressive one.

Let us be brutally frank: Chiefs and their acolytes in Chiefs' palaces across Ghana represent the last bastions of tribal-supremacism in Ghana.

Their unjustifiable arrogance, tiresome and derisible sense of  tribal uniqueness and superiority in 21st century Africa, are all firmly barricaded in palatial redoubts in the  north, south, east and west of our country - whence the miasma of tribalism spreads across our unitary state of diverse-ethnicity in which no tribe is superior or inferior to another.

Yet, in reality we are bound together as one people sharing a common destiny by inter-tribal marriages right across our nation. Let no one in this country forget that Chiefs by definition pose an existential threat to the Republic of Ghana - in national cohesion terms.

No nation in the modern technological  age can progress if it is dominated by an elite that owes its position in society to inherited privilege. That is why India eventually got rid of its Maharajahs after independence. And the results of that very wise decision on Indian society are there for all to see.

Today, India is a modern and technologically proficient nation, which is also a global economic power - whiles we march time and put up with Chiefs (some of whom immediately grow wings when their fellow tribesmen and women come to power and dominate our country politically) who keep tribalism alive with their warped sense of superiority in an Africa in which no tribe is inferior or superior to another. Pure nonsense on bamboo stilts.

And inherited privilege, as we all know, is the greatest enemy of meritocracy there is. Ghana will never progress if we do not rid our nation of the baleful influence of the Chieftaincy institution. Let us take a leaf from  India's book in that regard.

With respect, the president-elect would be wise to shelve this retrogressive step immediately. He ought to have told voters that such a policy was on the table during the campaign for the 7th December presidential election.

As it is, such a retrogressive policy was never part of the bargain voters struck with the NPP. Let the  NPP bear that in mind always. Period.

Hmm, Ghana enti yewieye paa enei? Eyeasem o. Asem kesie bi ebeba debi ankasa.