Akwasi Agyemang was pepe-scarified by Chairman Rawlings in 1979

If you want to fully appreciate the total and abject disrespect that the leaders of the Chairman Jerry John Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress (NDC) have for Ghanaians of Northern Descent or Northern Extraction, as it were, one has to go back in history to the barbaric Rawlings-led junta of the Ghana Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and, in particular, the deliberate and punitive facial mutilation that was inflicted on Nana Akwasi Agyeman, nephew of the late Asantehene, His Majesty, Otumfuo Opoku-Ware, II, whose passing on Tuesday, January 14, 2020 was hypocritically described as a seismic trauma to the NDC’s hoodlum pack of double-salary scamming leadership (See “NDC Pays Tribute to Ghana’s Longest-Serving Mayor” GhanaNewsAgency.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/23/20).

On Thursday, at an anti-new National Biometric Voters’ Register (NBVR) demonstration organized by the leaders of the NDC and attended by several NDC-financed splinter minority parties, a shameless and an unconscionable Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the dynastic and longest-serving General-Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, had the chutzpah to tell his audience and Ghanaians, at large, that Nana Akwasi Agyeman would be best remembered for his “patriotism, sense of discipline and commitment to duty.” Well, as I vividly recall, for I was living in the ancient royal capital of the Asante Confederacy at the time, in 1979, the prime heir and claimant to the Golden Stool was forced to carry raw human waste by some Rawlings-sponsored Trokosi Nationalist Goons from the Kumasi-based 4th Battalion of Infantry of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) through the principal streets of Adum, the central commercial district of Kumasi.

The latter scandalous and morally and historically irreparable act of humiliation may very well have cost the deceased his legitimate accession to the globally venerated Osei-Tutu Stool. Ironically, it would be the same half-Scottish waif who had indelibly ensured that Nana Akwasi Agyeman would never accede to the occupancy of the Osei-Tutu, I, Stool, who would also vigorously campaign on behalf of the deceased in the wake of the passing of Otumfuo Opoku-Ware, II, and, in effect, fiercely attempt to visit criminal indignity and sacrilege onto the same by staunchly backing the candidacy of the former Chief Executive Officer of the Kumasi City Council, as the post of the present mayoralty was then called. I have often wondered why the extant Asantehene, Otumfuo Opoku-Ware, II, and his courtiers, to wit, the movers-and-shakers of the Asanteman Council and Federation, had decided to irreligiously entertain the infamous Butcher-of-Sogakope in their midst and permitted the latter to become a frequent guest at Manhyia. Now, I am speaking as a grandson of the Asantehene and grandson of the Nifamanhene of Akyem-Abuakwa, Daasebre Nana Kwaku Agyeman-Okoampa of Asiakwa and Asante Juaben and Barekese.

Well, in 1979, as I vividly recall, Nana Akwasi Agyeman was punitively inducted into the “Abongo-Frafra Hall of Fame,” my profound and unreserved apologies to all Ghanaian citizens of Frafra ethnicity, in particular, and all Ghanaians of northern descent, in general, precisely because the rabidly anti-Asante/-Akan Rawlings Posse found Nana Akwasi Agyeman to be insufferably bereft of the very same qualities that they are now commending the latter for having generously possessed in surfeit or abundance. This past Thursday, for example, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia was busy pontifically telling Ghanaians that “Ghana has, indeed, lost a great son.” A great son, indeed, I huffed under my breath. I swear by my mother’s recently desecrated tomb at Akyem-Apedwa that if I were Barima Kwaku Duah, I would tell the Mahama Posse to keep whatever support they claim to have in store for supporting the funeral celebration of the man whose very royal Asante ethnicity, they so criminally and deliberately violated with punitive Frafra scarification as a means of effectively reducing Asanteman to absolutely nothing of historical significance.

And for good measure, needless to say, recently, Candidate John Dramani Mahama also had the temerity and effrontery to tell the global community that Barima Kwaku Duah, that is his real “boxed-up” name, is “The Liar of Kumasi.” So much for NDC-minted tributes and eulogies.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

E-mail: [email protected]

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