Owusu-Agyemang, Ibn Chambas Zoom Into Lome

Quite an important diplomatic foray into Togo by Ghana's Indefatigable Foreign Affairs Minister, Hackman Owusu-Agyemang was almost overshadowed by other local major political events last week when he zoomed into the Lome Capital accompanied by the new suave Executive Secretary of Ecowas, Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas.

The flying visit was indeed a dignified courtesy call on the Togolese Head of State, Gnassingbe Eyadema at his Lome private residence.

Speaking to the local media, Minister Owusu-Agyemang, appeared to be on a vital diplomatic mission intended to kill two birds with one calculated stone.

The Ghanaian Foreign Affairs Minister who flew into Togo direct from Burkina Faso said he was in Togo to express Ghana's profound sympathies and President Kufuor's heartfelt condolences to the Togolese Head of State, on the recent passing away of President Eyadema's senior brother, 86-year-old Koromsa Gnassingbe.

Koromsa Gnassingbe "went home" on January 4, this year, after a short illness.

He was buried on January 19, in Pya, his native village in the Kara district of northern Togo. But his last funeral rites were held a few days ago.

President Eyadema's late senior brother was a Ghanaian at heart.

According to reports, he lived quite a major part of his life in Ghana where he was a successful farmer.

He returned to Togo in the early '90s when political protests began to rock his country into acts of political violence.

Koromsa Gnassingbe was a fashionable man who always spotted a famous bowler hat. He left behind 15 beautiful siblings.

Sources say that he resembled his junior brother so much that many people often mistook him for President Gnassingbe Eyadema.

The Foreign Affairs Minister also took time to express the gratitude of the Ghana government for the unflinching diplomatic support President Eyadema offered Ghana during the campaign for the election of Dr. Chambas to the exalted post of Executive Secretary of Ecowas.

Dr. Chambas was specially nominated as a candidate to the post of Ecowas Executive Secretary by President Kufuor even though Ibn Chambas belonged to the former NDC government of former Ghanaian Head of State, Flt Lt. Jerry John Rawlings (rtd).

But Ghana's Foreign Affairs craftsman said the rare political gesture to sponsor a candidate from the opposition party "was in consonance with the politics of open-all-inclusive government of President John Kufuor."

Hackman won the hearts of the Togolese people when he launched himself into an instructive lecture on the need for Ghana and Togo to spearhead the battle for more rapid economic integration of the sub?-region.

"Both Ghana and Togo are great neighbours bound together by common historical, economic and cultural ties", Minister Hackman said.

He went down into memory lane and reminded the outside world that the peoples of Togo and Ghana were one and the same people whose time has come to move together, share, and benefit from the common vision of their two heads of state, Presidents Gnassingbe Eyadema and John Agyekum Kufuor for a more proactive process to attain the much desired free, liberal movement of goods and their respective peoples.

The late decision by Ghana to put forward Dr.Chambas as a candidate for the vacant post of Ecowas Executive Secretary when Ghana was already allotted the post of the Presidency of the Ecowas Bank for Finance and Development became a subject of intense criticism, both locally and within Ecowas.

Internally, critics accused President Kufuor of trying to indulge in a strategy that will render the constituency won by Dr. Chambas in Parliament vacant so that his NPP party can annexe it in a subsequent by-election in order to increase its number of seats in Ghana's Parliament.

Outside Ghana, observers accused Ghana of behaving like a diplomatic octopus, trying to upset a collective consensus decision which allocated specific portfolios in the Sub-regional grouping.

Under this arrangement, the post of Ecowas Executive Secretary was allocated outside Ghana's prerogative.

But following what looked like a risky diplomatic gamble, Ghana's Foreign Affairs minister, Hackman Owusu-Agyemang pursued with relentless persistence, Ghana's avowed interest in the exalted post of Executive Secretary.

Against the background of intense diplomatic horse trading, and behind closed door negotiations, Ghana forged ahead with determination and managed, with stupefying aplomb, to prove all her critics wrong.

Today, the unanimous decision by the Ecowas Heads of State to approve the election of Dr. Ibn Chambas as the first Ghanaian Executive Secretary of Ecowas, has become another diplomatic feather in the bulging cap of the Kufuor administration, and a personal triumph for Hackman Owusu-Agyemang.

Many bird watchers had predicted political doom for the Ghanaian minister's political career if his risky gamble had failed to click!

Dr. Chambas comes from an ethnic group whose roots and antecedents spread preponderantly throughout northern Ghana, Togo, and Nigeria.

"The name Ibn Chambas literally means the true son of the Chamba people," revealed a highly placed Nigerian diplomatic source.

For Ibn Chambas, the true spirit of integration began long ago with his dominant but unassuming ethnic group in the Sub-region long before Ecowas was founded in 1975.