Northern Partitioning and Political Expediency – Part 2

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

In this installment of my contribution to the discourse on the controversial question of partitioning Ghana’s Northern Region into “at least” two discrete administrative units, I intend to address the concerns of several of my critics – both those with genuine concerns as well as those who have, for the most part, taken pot-shots at me merely because, somehow, they are of the grossly mistaken belief that only Ghanaians of northern descent have a right to publicly discuss this most critical question verging on our beloved nation’s geopolitical organicity or cohesion.

Among the first of my critics was one who demanded to know why I hadn’t written anything critical when the then-ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), under the leadership of President John Agyekum-Kufuor, decided to create, by the aforementioned critic’s own count, approximately thirty (30) district assemblies. My riposte on the latter score is quite simple – and it borders on the fact that traditionally, the Danquah-Busia ideological camp has been almost uniquely associated with the mature, intelligent, democratic and pragmatic politics of “Decentralization,” as widely attested by Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia’s 1956 demand for regional autonomy along the lines of a federation.

Interestingly, however, it was people like Messrs. Atta-Mills and John Mahama, and their forebears before them, who had cried foul and shamelessly proceeded to malign the Danquah-Busia camp, then operating under the nominal aegis of the United Party (UP), as agents of neocolonial and imperialist disunity. And so it is rather wanly amusing that a half-century later, the fanatical apostles of Pan-Africanism would be zealously agitating not only for geopolitical “Decentralization,” but actually mischievously seek to make a huge capital out of the gratuitously impractical balkanization of the same entity for which then-Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah staunchly advocated a “Unitary” system of governance.

What needs to be recalled here, at least in passing, is that on the eve of its handover of the reins of governance to the Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP), the British government had cobbled together for the erstwhile Gold Coast a semblance of “Regionalism,” with each of the then-seven (7) regions maintaining, by statutory arrangement, a regional assembly. Needless to say, the ever-scheming African Show Boy (ASB), increasingly becoming an extortionate dictator, would quickly move, once Britain handed over the august reins of governance to the ASB’s CPP, to summarily dissolve this all-too-rational democratic arrangement and proceed, almost immediately, to impose his individual will, ambitions and aspirations on the largely unlettered and unsuspecting Ghanaian electorate.

The logical outcome of such brutal abrogation of the civilized and creative rule of democratic culture, was the one-party dictatorship that summarily commandeered and cannibalized an otherwise salutary postcolonial Ghanaian political landscape by 1964. In the latter year also, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, having transformed himself from the more democratic and relatively more accountable leader into an authoritarian “Executive President” in 1960, would also summarily declare himself the “Life-President” of Ghana.

And on the preceding score, it needs to be promptly recalled for the benefit of those among our fold who were either too young or unborn to fully appreciate Ghana’s current democratic dispensation, that the idea of having a “Federal Republic of Ghana” was originally mooted by Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics, in 1949, in the wake of Mr. Nkrumah’s breakaway from the seminal United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) to form his partly plagiarized and brazenly tautological, albeit deviously opportunistic Convention People’s Party (CPP).

Back then, having ominously styled himself as “Life-Chairman” of the CPP, the highly understandably alarmed Dr. Danquah promptly fired off a letter to Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, who had then just begun using his academically unearned title of “Doctor,” to remind the African Show Boy (ASB) that the political culture that the then-Gold Coasters had in mind, in the offing, did not brook the flagrant and summary imposition of “a one-person and a one-party dictatorship” (See Danquah’s The Voice of Prophecy).

By 1951, therefore, when he was named Head of Government Business by the British colonial administration (Nkrumah would later petition the Governor and have the latter convert the title to Prime Minister, a move that the notoriously megalomaniacal African Show Boy would later regret), Nkrumah had both conveniently and opportunely positioned himself to be able to embark on his rather quixotic political experimentation with the destiny of his countrymen and women.

At any rate, what makes the stentorian talk about the need to partition the Northern Region into “at least” two discrete administrative entities (and possibly even three or four regions, when one pays careful attention to the logical subtext of the rhetoric of the “Salaga Matemehoites [Separatists],” the irony of it all), is the apparently grossly mistaken belief, largely on the part of the key agitators including, of course, Messrs. Atta-Mills, Mahama, Nabila, among a legion of others, is that Ghana’s constitutionally stipulated policy agenda of “Decentralization” would thereby be enhanced.

Nothing, of course, could be farther from the truth. For the truth of the matter, if the key actors in the agitation for the partitioning of the Northern Region really care to know (and it is rather worrisome that quite a slew of these agitators do not appear to fully appreciate the dire implications of their demand, besides the likely possibility of scoring a few cheap points at the polls), is that as of this writing (11/8/09), dear reader get this from me, Ghana is, still, veritably a “Unitary State,” with virtually every policy decision of moment fully determined and implemented from both the old slave castle at Osu and our largely lame-duck National Assembly (or Parliament).

In sum, and in practical terms, creating more regional administrative apparatuses out of the existing ones is highly unlikely to redound to the socio-cultural, economic and political benefit of any of the primarily affected denizens, besides granting a few purely patronage positions to party hacks and their immediate associates and cronies. What is more, the huge outlay of monetary and material capital that is apt to be invested in such boondoggle could be better invested in rural infrastructure, if, indeed, the Atta-Mills regime is serious about stanching the massive and unsavory flow of hapless citizens from the countryside to our bursting and woefully under-resourced urban communities. And on the latter score, of course, one has in mind the cringing eyesores that are the Sodoms and Gomorrahs of the Ghanaian geo-cultural landscape.

Interestingly, however, in creating the estimated 30 (thirty) district assemblies, believe it or not, President Kufuor and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) remarkably moved Ghana closer towards our ultimate constitutionally stipulated policy agenda of “Decentralization;” for unlike the largely pro-forma and bureaucratic regional assemblies, it is actually the district, and also to a relatively more limited extent the regional, assemblies that have, so far, amply demonstrated themselves to be functionally capable of bringing government to both the doorsteps and homes of the common people.

For it goes without saying that “administrative/political decentralization” implies massive and viable mobilization of citizens at the local level for the practical purpose of ensuring their material and cultural uplift; and so far, the district assemblies have, it appears, significantly demonstrated their enviable capacity for the same.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based, pro-democracy think-tank, the Danquah Institute (DI), and the author of 20 books, including “Abe: Reflections on Love” (Atumpan Publications/Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com. ###