House of Chiefs Risks Becoming a White Elephant

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

The apparently pro-forma condemnation by the National House of Chiefs (NHC) of the New/Free Press allegation linking the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu II, to the bribery of some members of the Supreme Court panel of jurists that heard and delivered its scandalous verdict on the Akufo-Addo/New Patriotic Party (NPP) 2012 Presidential Petition, woefully begs the question of whether, indeed, the alleged caper occurred (See "National House of Chiefs Condemns Free Press for Asantehene Story" Vibeghana.com/Ghanaweb.com 9/18/13).

What Awulae Attibrukusu III, Vice-President of the National House of Chiefs, who signed the official statement condemning the allegation, ought to have done was to have called for a thorough investigation of the allegation. In other words, merely condemning the editors and publishers of the New Free Press will not wash. Ghanaians are far more educated and enlightened than the members of the NHC suppose. We have also not forgotten the gifting of some dozen Toyota Land Cruisers by President Mahama to some members of the National House of Chiefs, then meeting in Kumasi, in the heat of the 2012 Presidential Campaign.

At the time of the payola presentation, for that was clearly what those Toyota Land Cruisers were meant to be, we aptly called the gesture by its veritable description, a scandalous payola! For not only did it inexcusably cheapen the status and dignity of our major traditional rulers, it also insulted their intelligence.

Let's be clear here on one thing: Nobody is "attacking" the dignity and integrity of the chieftaincy institution, whose most powerful individual embodiment in the country is the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu II. What we are suggesting here is that our traditional rulers ought to live above reproach, or we might just as well proscribe the entire chieftaincy institution. For it is increasingly becoming clear that some of our most influential, and powerful, traditional rulers prefer to play the patently undignified role of servants and butlers and morally embarrassing conduits to the at once decadent and criminal shenanigans of the movers and shakers of the so-called National Democratic Congress. It is almost eerily and luridly akin to a prototypical colonial situation.

Once again, like their megalomaniacal paymaster and illegal occupant of the Flagstaff House, Mr. John Dramani Mahama, we find the members of the National House of Chiefs rather quizzically and vacuously blaming Internet technology for their own rascally ways. It is high time our chiefs and traditional rulers dignified themselves with conduct befitting their status, or risk becoming otiose and irrelevant to the cultural mores and ethos of civilized contemporary society.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Sept. 18, 2013
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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