POLITICS
The fervour of Bawku vendetta has towered to a hairy compass since the advent of John Mahama gov’t
Ghana is among the few countries in West Africa distinguished to be oasis of peace in a sub-region either than being characterized by civil wars, rebel activities and general instability.
This portrayal of Ghana, however, only masks a festering wound of communal violence, inter-ethnic conflicts and armed confrontations in the Northern part of the country.
The root seats of these conflicts, which have virtually become untiring, are substantially traceable to the instigation of secular political authority/chieftaincy in areas which, before colonialism, were styled as stateless or acephalous. The security of the entire region has often been compromised by the scope of turmoil, wanton forfeiture of lives and properties, profligacy of the nation’s exiguous resources and the schisms of people.
In general, scholars, principally anthropologists, have pigeonholed the political fabrics of pre-colonial Northern Ghanaian societies either as ‘centralized’ or ‘non-centralized’.
The ‘centralized political systems’ allude to those with central authority, incarnated in chiefs analogous to those in Asante. The ‘non-centralized breeds’ were those, deprived of a locus of central political jurisdiction and instead, supervised by tendanas (land owners or earth priests) who could invoke spiritual and moral sanctions.
The imperishable ethnic tangle, plaguing the country is from the territory of Bawku. At the nucleus of the Kusasi-Mamprusi conflict is an agglomeration of issues about litigations over allodial rights and chieftaincy. Both the Kusasi and the Mamprusi aver allodial ownership of Bawku, assertions which are shrouded in their narrative histories of genesis and procured from avouchment of autochthony.
Even though, the Alhassan Committee which audited land ownership in Northern Ghana in 1978 had fingered first-comership as one of the grounds to postulation of land ownership, but till now, that barometer used then, is moot and tendentious amongst the maiden pilgrims of Bawku.
It is incontrovertible fact that, when Nana Akufo Addo was in government he had prioritized ameliorating the bellicose affray at Bawku, thereby networking with the behemoth stakeholders for embracive and telling panacea against making such belligerent and inimical scene unfolds in recrudescence.
In April 2023, the Minister of Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs then, Hon. Stephen Asamoah – Boateng, illuminated to us on how the government was geared up unwaveringly to reconcile the indigenes of Bawku, and thus, it was a weighty preoccupation of the government _ to saddle the aggravation of it exhaustively.
It was a Sisyphean task for the Akufo Addo administration, since this feud could be sourced to many moons ago during their dynastic span. But, for the epic and sui generis resilience and granite of him, he pursued such lubricious and harrying road to gentle and dulcify the flaring storm.
As a result, Nana Akufo Addo waxed lyrical about the Overlord of the Mamprugu Traditional Area, Naa Bohagu Mahami Abdulai Sheriga II, for supplementing his efforts in rehabilitating unyielding tranquility to Bawku in October 2024, when he swung by him. Therefore, it is palpable and screaming fact that, before Nana Akufo Addo had left office, the enclave of Bawku was in effervescent placidity.
Under the current regime of John Mahama, this butcherous duel has been elevated to a grisly acme. John Mahama is symptomatically callous to this macabre incident and that has seasoned the brigands and raiders to running high the venom.
There haven’t been a hermetic and impregnable military personnel being garrisoned at that place to securitize it and as a result, the town isn’t impervious to the resurgence and reignition of the high noon.
It will be a sheer erratum to intimate that, the NDC government envisages to extinguish this feral tussle transpiring convulsively _ this has been their cloaked makeup for ages. I am not politicizing this, but whoever has tailed their lines of ratiocination will subscribe with me that, the slackness of the NDC leaders to coact with the NPP superiors in soothing the denizen of Bawku is conspicuous.
Once upon a time, the present – leader of the NDC Party, Hassan Ayariga hazarded an eccentric projection that, before the battle at Bawku evaporates, the country must inject a mammoth financial resources into that effort. In fact, this declaration came as a bombshell to the masses of the citizens.
Did the world expend all its fiscal resources in dissolving the ‘ World War II ‘ ? His gesture was crystal clear that, the hierarchies of the NDC Party have manifested no urgency to stem this tribal cut – throat clutter.
A discernible paragon is the prevailing sector Minister ; this man is dearth of technical prowess and any other substantial and weighty substitute to embrace, in case, he totters along the line.
What this man does, is to bequeath to the indigenes a verbal pledge and panacea and nothing fruitful at all. Mr. John Mahama, the scraps of Bawku need an exigent emancipation, so angelically attend to their imploration, because they are marked Ghanaians also.
Source: Prof. Dinkum.
(The Buzzing Rapine Of Erudition)
E – mail : dinkumchoice@gmail.com
