…Says “it is a ‘toothless bulldog”

By Cletus Abaare

A group calling itself the Dagbon Students Association (DASA) is advocating for the immediate withdrawal of representatives of the Abudus and Andanis meeting with the Otumfuo Committee of Eminent Chiefs over the Dagbon chieftaincy crisis. The president the group, one Jagbo Baako, in a press conference held in Tamale yesterday linked the king of the Asantes, Otumfo Osei Tutu II Committee dubbed the Otumfuo Mediation Committee as a “toothless bulldog” that could not find any reasonable solution to the Dagbon crisis.

Mr. Baako at the conference stated that the Otumfuo committee had failed to achieve its objective, hence the need to abandon it and use internal mechanisms to resolve the crisis among Dagombas.

He continued that the former President John Agyekum Kufuor set up the Asantehene-led Committee of Eminent Chiefs to handle the traditional aspect of the Dagbon chieftaincy crisisadding that since its establishment, the committee has witnessed series of boycotts from both the Abudu and Andani Gates.

The President of the Group believe that the solution to the Dagbon could only be best solve by Dagombas themselves and not by any other tribal group adding that throughout our research we have not come across anywhere in our tradition that if Dagbon has a problem it should be Asantehene that should be addressed.

“We think if they are able to come home and bring the issues back home they will be able to resolve it,” Baako suggested. "Throughout our research we have not come across anywhere in our tradition that if Dagbon has a problem it should be Asantehene that should be addressed. ”

“If our chiefs have forgotten of our tradition we are only reminding them,” he said.

Baako also appealed to the media to blacklist spokespersons for the Abudu and Andani royals, who have been at each other’s throat since the death of the overlord of Dagbon, Yaa-Naa Yakubu Andani II in March 2002.

“We are also calling the media to blacklist the so called spokespersons because we think they are doing a great disservice to Dagbon. The more they talk about Dagbon on air the more they distort a lot of things in Dagbon. ”

On 25th April, 2002, President John Agyekum Kufuor, by Constitutional Instrument, 2002 (C.I.36), appointed this Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Justice I.N.K. Wuaku, to investigate the Yendi disturbances of 25th to 27th March, 2002, identify the perpetrators and make appropriate recommendations to the President. The Commission relied on public testimonies of witnesses, memoranda, on site visits to the scene of events at Yendi and the burial grounds, briefings (in camera) by the Security Agencies (i.e. the BNI and the Police) as well as evidence in camera, to inform its work and arrive at the findings and recommendations.