Coat-of-Arms Belongs to the People of Ghana

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]

I was not going to weigh in on the Coat-of-Arms flap, once I realized how trivial the entire episode was (See "Akomea Wades Into Akufo-Addo's Coat-of-Arms Controversy" MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/9/15). Still, it is significant to get one thing clear and right off the bat, as it were. Our national Coat-of-Arms is not the property of any individual leader or personality. It embodies the sovereignty of the people of Ghana. I don't know what the country's 1992 Republican Constitution has to say on the matter, but the protocol has been for our national Coat-of-Arms to be used in decorating podiums used by the President of Ghana or any other personality delegated to represent the nation abroad.

I am also quite sure that this is not the very first time that Nana Akufo-Addo has used a podium decked with our national Coat-of-Arms. While he served as Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, as well as Foreign Minister and had to represent President John Agyekum-Kufuor at official functions, both at home and abroad, the country's Coat-of-Arms could have been fittingly used. I mean, if I remember accurately, this insignia appears on the caps and berets of our national security agency officials, such as members of the Ghana Armed Forces and the Ghana Police Service. Replicas of it likely adorn the lecture and/or conference rooms of the various Ghanaian diplomatic missions abroad for the use of our High Commissioners and Ambassadors, and also for the use of any sitting president or cabinet appointee who pays an official visit to any of our diplomatic missions abroad.

It well appears that the occasion for which our Coat-of-Arms was most recently used by Nana Akufo-Addo did not properly call for such usage. We are told that it was at the "Adua" or final funeral rites for the slain Upper-East New Patriotic Party Chairman, Mr. Adams Mahama. On this occasion, though, the most fitting emblems or insignias ought to have been a combination of the Ghana Flag and the Flag of the New Patriotic Party. The explanation given by Nana Akomea, the NPP Communications Director, is rather lame. According to Nana Akomea, the decision to festoon the podium used by Akufo-Addo at Mr. Mahama's funeral rites was taken by the NPP's Regional Coordinating Council. Such a response woefully begs the question of whether it was the appropriate thing to do or not.

If it happens not to have been the appropriate thing to do, then, of course, it wouldn't hurt for either the NPP Leader or his Bolgatanga hosts to unreservedly apologize to President John Dramani Mahama. Other than the foregoing analysis and observations, I really don't see anything "disgusting" about Nana Akufo-Addo's use of Ghana's Coat-of-Arms at Alhaji Adams Mahama's funerary rites. I, however, recognize the fact that it was Mr. Mark Woyongo, the Interior Minister, who deputized for President Mahama at Mr. Mahama's ADUA, who ought to have fittingly been afforded the privilege of using a Coat-of-Arms-festooned podium to address the mourners, guests and other participants.

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