What is happening in the Volta Region?
Yes, I am going to town, as they say, on the secessionist moves and intrigues in the Volta Region today. Before I do so, however, let me say a few things about the death of a former Member of Parliament for Dormaa in the Brong-Ahafo Region in the Second and Third republics.
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I read about the demise of Dr Solomon Manson in this paper last Wednesday, with much surprise and sadness.
Dr Manson was the Minority Whip in the Parliament of the Third Republic, led at the time by Mr Odoi-Sykes. The major minority party then was Victor Owusu’s Popular Front Party. The Third Republic lasted from 1979 to 1981, when it was displaced by the Provisional National Defence Council [PNDC] led by J.J. Rawlings.
When Mr Ken Ofori-Atta read the 2017 budget on March 2, this year, he referred, with approval, to the rejection of President Hilla Limann’s budget read by Prof. George Benneh on July 23, 1981. This was because his father, Mr Jones Ofori-Atta, at the time the MP for Begoro in the Eastern Region, had combined with Dr G.K. Agama, MP for Tongu, of the United National Convention [UNC], to shred the budget statement to pieces. I remember clearly as if it was yesterday, the colourful phrase Dr Agama used to describe the budget as one of ‘incredible emptiness.’
Headcount
It was Dr Manson who upon taking a headcount of all MPs present that day found that the minority outnumbered the majority members that day. The minority then called for a vote and the budget was shot down. I had, two epistles ago, recalled that this was in the midst of merger talks between the minority parties and gave a big psychological boost to that effort which eventually led to consummation of the merger and the election of the PFP leader, Victor Owusu, to lead the new party into the 1983 presidential elections. But it was not to be.
We were using a constitution similar to the Fourth Republican Constitution now, but this did not prevent those supporting the opposition from calling on the Limann government to resign, as if we were using the Westminster prime ministerial type.
Legon press conference
Indeed, the Legon branch of the opposition called a press conference and demanded that the government should resign immediately. It was addressed by the branch chairman, my own brother Kakra Essamuah. It was fully reported in this very paper with the byline of the (late) Breda Atta-Quayson. So when I saw the report of the death of Dr Manson who we knew and interacted with, I knew a part of the parliamentary history of this country was gone forever. May he rest in peace.
Volta Region
Now to the Volta Region. Let me say at once loudly and without equivocation to those secessionists and pretenders that there is no way I am using my passport to visit my own relatives in the region. Yes, I have close relations in the region. Secondly, I must admit that there has always been hints and suggestions of secession since the 1956 plebiscite which joined the then Togoland Trust Territory to the then Gold Coast prior to independence in March 1957.
But the current agitation seems to take some needed oxygen from the intentions of President Akufo-Addo to create new regions, especially in the Western and Volta regions. Note also that the National Liberation Movement [NLM] and its allies supported the breakaway efforts of the Volta secessionists at the time, and we have here, a historical linkage of Matemeho politics with that of today in the actions of the present secessionists. Now that is a dangerous destabilising brew that we may do well to avoid.
It is very odd seeking to lead this country Ghana, and turning around to deliberately dismember same in pursuit of an ambition which was democratically and roundly defeated 61 years ago. I am aware that there are elements in the ruling New Patriotic Party who think this is a good development, seeing that the Volta Region is a world bank of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). It is not enough to defeat the party in polls, but to drive away a couple millions of our fellow countrymen and women to secure the supremacy of the NPP.
There is, however, a snag that I can foresee looking back at our own political history. Voltarians were the only people who voted overwhelmingly for Dr J.B. Danquah during the plebiscite of 1960 to turn this country into a republic with its own President. Those results proved up to today, and beyond, that the hated President Nkrumah was not the monarch of all he surveyed in our politics. People change, and certainly one day, this will manifest even in all our world banks.
All this means that if President Akufo-Addo is sincere about his patriotism, his ideas about creating new regions need another rethink, or must be shelved. I am yet to be convinced that the defeated federalist idea that was settled in the general election of 1956 is what is being sought to be revived. If that were so, the only route to go would be to collapse all regional borders, abolish chieftaincy, and fashion a new secular republican entity built solely on our citizenship, not any particularist forms of identity or culture.
Mr Kosi Kedem, a historian in his own right, seems to be championing aspects of this agitation which provokes the thought, farfetched though it may be, that he desires to be president of a new country. President Kedem. Of course, we may never know whether the inviting prospects of new oil finds in commercial quantities in the region is not what is provoking this renewed clamour. It is alleged that he claims the British misrepresented the plebiscite to the United Nations in 1956. What for? They were leaving the following year anyway.
We have no serious inkling whether President Faure Gnassingne of Togo is ready to welcome this annexation of Ghanaian territory, or a new nation on his western border. This is an unfortunate reminder of the 1938 anschluss of Germany with Austria, repeated awkwardly by the Russians in the Crimea two years ago. The Volta Region must not be a precursor to the destruction of this country and I call on our President to halt his programme of creating new regions to preserve our peace and secure our future and development.
