Another Tribute to the Genius of J. B. Danquah

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The reported proposal of the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) to make the position of the President of the Ghana National House of Chiefs the fifth most powerful office of the land, after the President, Vice-President, Speaker of the House (of Parliament) and the Chief Justice, is not the very first of its kind by any stretch of either the imagination or postcolonial Ghanaian history (See “Chiefs’ Capo Proposed for ‘Most Powerful’ Post” MyJoyOnline.com 3/24/11).

To be certain, the first time that Ghanaians were seriously apprised of the imperative need to modernize the institution of Chieftaincy, by functionally streamlining and incorporating it into the mainstream of Ghanaian political culture, was in the pre-colonial Legislative Assembly. And the clarion call, of course, came from none other than the Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics, Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah. This was either in the late 1940s or early in the 1950s (See J. B. Danquah’s The Voice of Prophecy, compiled by H. K. Acheampong; also Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe’s Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana).

Unfortunately, when the proposal was put to a vote on the floor of the House, Danquah massively and miserably lost. But, of course, the real victim and loser, in retrospect, was the political culture and destiny of modern Ghana. Among the handful of foresighted and lambent-witted legislators who backed Danquah’s proposal, were Drs. Nanka Bruce, one of the two representatives for Accra, and Asafu-Adjei of the august Asante Federation. Nii Amaah Ollennu, the second Legislative Assembly representative from Accra, tauntingly and mirthfully voted against Dr. Danquah’s proposal, preferring to envisage it as a devious attempt to stall Nkrumah’s unfettered right to govern the transitional and emergent postcolonial Ghanaian state.

Needless to say, Mr. Ollennu, later Justice Ollennu of Ghana’s Court of Appeal, would live long enough to regret his decision in the aftermath of the auspicious overthrow of President Nkrumah and his Convention People’s Party (See the “Foreword” to Peter Omari’s Kwame Nkrumah: The Anatomy of an African Dictatorship).

And here must also be recalled the fact that at the time, Danquah had proposed a far more functionally integral role for the National House of Chiefs, including the immediate conversion of the latter into the Upper House/Senate of Ghana’s National Assembly. And on the latter score, it is significant to quickly point out that Danquah envisaged the conversion of the National House of Chiefs into a postcolonial equivalent of the British House of Lords, with constitutionally sanctioned powers of a Court of Last Resort.

We must, here again, recall the fact that the thoroughgoing rejection of Danquah’s proposal was more tinged with envy, on the part of a vehement opposition (actually a legislative majority) spearheaded by Mr. Kwame Nkrumah. The latter would, of course, shortly hobble the Chieftaincy institution by neo-colonially attempting to politically co-opt it as the cultural wing of his Convention People’s Party (CPP), but with limited success. Then also must be added, at least in passing, the fact that the future Dr. Danquah, together with his elder brother and guardian, Osagyefo Nana (Sir) Ofori-Atta I, would play a seminal role in the establishment of the National House of Chiefs as a cardinal institution of Ghanaian/African cultural heritage. Consequently, if, indeed, the auspicious political empowerment of the National House of Chiefs is a proverbial idea whose time has come, then, by all means, let this august institution be integrated into our national political super-structure/apparatus far beyond cosmetically seeking to merely upgrade the individual position of the President of the National House of Chiefs.

And, to be certain, it is also with the preceding in full frontal view that we would rather that Prof. John Nabila, the current President of the National House of Chiefs, squarely focused on the integration of this august institution fully into the mainstream of our national political culture, rather than simply and parochially envisaging the remarkable material endowment that is apt to accompany the political and institutional upgrading of the position of the President of the National House of Chiefs.

And so, no, we do not wholly agree with Prof. Nabila that “the role of chiefs would not be significantly different if the proposal is accepted by the [Constitutional Review] Commission.” To be certain, what we envisage for a transformed National House of Chiefs, is for the latter to serve as the highest level of our national court of conscience, with the adjudicative powers of either an appeals court or “super-supreme court,” which is why we greatly anticipate a “senatorially” invested National House of Chiefs to be guardedly non-partisan. Of course, there is still room for debate.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and author, most recently, of “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011). E-mail: [email protected]. ###