The Two Roots Of The Dagbon Crisis....

That Must Not Be Overlooked, As We Seek Justice In The Murder of Ya-Na Andani II

By Otchere Darko

Irrespective of motive, murder is a heinous crime and therefore, wherever and whenever murder occurs, the perpetrators have to be looked for and punished to ensure that those who commit such horrendous crimes are not left free to do the same again and, also to convey a strong warning to others who may be planning to commit the same or similar crimes. Failing to seek and hold accountable those who commit murder is a very serious “failure of national duty” on the part of all the people whose collective role it is to seek and prosecute such criminals. Seeking, arresting, and prosecuting people for a murder they may not have committed, or for a murder they may have committed on the “orders” of another or others, however, do not only constitute a travesty of justice to those arrested and accused, but in addition, they become an abuse of office, a betrayal of trust and a multiple denial of justice against the State, the rule of law, relatives of the murdered person and the community of the victims concerned generally. Every murder is awful; but when people are murdered because of the public duties they are performing, or because of their roles in society, then their cases become “special” and call for the kind of “special public attention” that should be devoid of party politics and ethnic flavouring. It is for this reason that every effort should be made by Ghanaians for “two outstanding high-profile murder cases” in Ghana to be investigated thoroughly and without political and ethnic pollution to enable the true perpetrators of the two crimes to be identified and prosecuted “properly”. These “two outstanding high-profile murder cases” I am referring to are: the murder of the three high court judges and one army officer that took place in 1982; and the murder of Ya-Na Andani II that took place roughly twenty years after the murder of the above four distinguished Ghanaian public officials. The two cases have both failed to receive the kind of thorough and independent investigations that can reveal the real perpetrators of those crimes and which also can assemble all the evidence needed to succeed in the prosecution of such people.

In the various responses to the recent high court ruling concerning the fifteen people who were arrested and prosecuted for the murder of the said late Dagbon King, and who were acquitted on grounds of lack of convincing evidence, many Ghanaians have failed to take into consideration the absolute need for justice to be “pursued properly”, rather than for justice to be seen “being pursued”. Secondly, Ghanaians fail to recognise two vital root-causes of the “Dagbon crisis”. These two causes are the “politicisation of chieftaincy” and the “antiquity of the institution of chieftaincy”. This article features principally these two root-causes which Ghanaians have recently overlooked when people are talking about the late Ya-Na or about the recent trial of the fifteen people who were arrested, prosecuted and acquitted on charges of murdering the late King.

With respect to the “politicisation of chieftaincy, firstly, it was, and still is wrong for the two royal dynasties of the Dagbon Ya-Na skin to have allied, and be continuing to ally themselves with Ghana’s two main political parties to such degree that it has become clear for every Ghanaian to notice that the Andanis belong to the NDC while the Abudus belong to NPP. There was one very good thing that the framers of the 1992 Constitution put into our basic law; and this is the provision that bans chiefs from engaging in party politics, as contained in Article 168(1). This ban notwithstanding, these two Dagbon dynasties that have been quarrelling over the Dagbon skin long before the murder of King Andani II have openly identified themselves with one or the other of the two dominant parties, as if the constitutional reference to Ghanaian monarchies in the said ban is not a reference to the various monarchical dynasties associated with the various kings and chiefs in the country. It should, however, be obvious to anybody interpreting Article 168 of the 1992 Constitution that a reference to a chief in that provision is a reference to the kingmakers and all other members of the monarchy..... not just the chief or king. It is therefore wrong in law for the Andanis and the Abudus, who are dynastic rivals of the Dagbon Ya-Na skin, to openly ally themselves with the NDC and the NPP respectively and, for that matter, with party politics in contravention with Article 168(1) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. Also wrong, was the promise made by President Mills to the Andanis during the 2008 election...... that he, Mills, would find and prosecute the killers of the late King, if he was voted President. When a presidential candidate makes such a promise in the heat of an election campaign, then he is trying to buy the votes of Andanis with a “political promise”. This is a clear politicisation of the crisis. No wonder, the Andanis expected the President to deliver on a matter that hinges purely on “law” and “facts”...... which no President can influence through his executive powers. Thus, when the court case failed the President was perceived to have failed to deliver on his promise; and was perceived therefore to have betrayed the Andanis. Another example of politicisation of the crisis is the recent “politicised blame-game” being played out by several Ghanaian politicians who, instead of suggesting ways to resolve the crisis, make statements that stir sentiments and inflame the anger of the Andanis who feel “lost” and “betrayed”.

With respect to the antiquated nature of the chieftaincy institution, one can say that one main cause of the Dagbon crisis from the pre-murder stage to the present stage of the stalemate has been the fact that the two rival dynasties, the Andanis and the Abudus, have disagreed on Dagbon customary law interpretation and application as they concern ascendency to the Ya-Na skin when it becomes vacant. This most crucial root-cause of the crisis is hardly mentioned by ordinary Ghanaians and politicians when they are discussing the problem. Why is it that a Ghanaian monarch, a king or a chief, has to die or be incapacitated before kingmakers of the stool or skin can meet and look for the heir or replacement of such deceased king or chief? Why can’t there always be a “crown heir” in waiting? What does it make our chieftaincy institution in this twenty-first century, when we have to wait for a king or chief to die or be incapacitated before we ask kingmakers to give us his heir or replacement? Why can’t all communities in Ghana know the names of all rightful heirs to all stools and skins in their traditional areas in a gazetted order of sequence, before such stools or skins become vacant? Until we can know and gazette the people who are the lawful heirs to all stools and skins in Ghana at any given time irrespective of whether such stools and skins are occupied or vacant, Ghana will sadly continue to have incidents like the one that led to the sad loss of the late Ya-Na of Dagbon.

While we are looking for the perpetrators of the Ya-Na murder, therefore, we must also tackle the two main causes of the crisis that culminated in the commission of the horrendous crime, which have led to a protraction of the resultant post-murder conflict, and which also have made finding a workable basis for conflict resolution and reconciliation difficult, if not elusive. *This means that we must find the most practical and practicable way of completely detaching party politics from chieftaincy, just as the constitution orders that in Article 168(1). *We must also reform and modernise this twelfth century institution that has been bequeathed on Ghanaian communities by our ancestors from as far back as the old Ghana Empire, and which contains weaknesses that inhibit its successful incorporation into our modern Ghanaian values and practices. If we, as a nation, fail to remove these two root-causes of the crisis that transcend across the broad spectrum of the Ghanaian chieftaincy institution, then we must expect similar crises in future in Dagbon or elsewhere in Ghana, even after we have found and punished the perpetrators of the alleged murder of the late great Dagbon King, Ya-Na Andani II.

Source: Otchere Darko; [This writer, {who is not the same as Gabby Otchere-Darko}, is a centrist, semi-liberalist, pragmatist, and an advocate for “inter-ethnic cooperation and unity”. He is an anti-corruption campaigner and a community-based development protagonist. He opposes the negative, corrupt, and domineering politics of NDC and NPP and actively campaigns for the development and strengthening of “third parties”. He is against “a two-party only” system of democracy {in Ghana}....... which, in practice, is what we have today.