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The queen mother of the Abura State
The queen mother of the Abura State

Why Abura but not Nkusukum epistle?

Today’s column title may confuse some of my readers, but it is actually a very live issue in the mail I regularly receive in response to the epistle.

My readers know that my hometown is Saltpond , the principal town in the Nkusukum State in the Central Region. The capital, or where the Omanhen resides, is Yamoransa, known nationally for its wayside kenkey sellers, who have carved the expression ‘wona de okyia wo!’ for their trade along the Accra-Cape Coast highway. The Abura State shares a border with the Nkusukum State at several famous historical places in the region. 

As a hundred per cent Akan citizen who inherits matrilineally, it is therefore true that I trace my descent to Saltpond but not Abura Dunkwa, which itself is not my father’s hometown but his father’s. Confused? My father came from the citadel of Borbor Fante civilisation and social strata being a royal in his own right, Mankessim literally ‘big country’ or town in the Fante language. I do not know of any Fante man or woman who does not lay claim to descent from Mankessim with pride. The reason for this is not one of the concerns of the epistle for today.

To continue the convolutions which hav drawn the regular attention of some of my readers, the town of Abura Dunkwa is not the capital of the Abura people. That distinction belongs to Abakrampa, a bit inland off the highway from Cape Coast to Kumasi, arguably the oldest highway in this country. In other words, my traditional chiefly allegiance is to the Omanhen at Yamoransa, who, I must confess, I do not even know, and not to the Overlord of the Abura State at Abakrampa. I use the term Overlord with studied derision, as a current but powerless, common term in the description of the paramount chiefs in our proto-states before colonisation and the creation of the modern nation-state of Ghana.

In other words, it is more convenient to claim to be from anywhere in Ghana which the laws allow than trying to unravel the precise roots of one’s background, allegiance or citizenship. The way I write the word Fante itself rather than Mfantse exposes clearly that I am seriously Ghanaian, to escape any claim to being unique just because of one’s traditional roots. To be accurate, therefore, in the secular sense, is to claim allegiance to both traditional states. Since any traditional military service would have required I join my father’s patrilineal regiment, hence the choice of Abura Epistle.

Confession 

Having said all this, I must confess the above remarks preface a confession; to expose a few of our important countrymen and women, dead, or living and active in public affairs, who hail from either place. The late Professor PAV Ansah used a private newspaper to write his Prabiw column. Prabiw is a suburb of Saltpond.

Having laid my intentions bare, I am sure my editor is smirking that he found love in one of the two towns.

 The Honourable Ato Essuman formerly of the Council of State is one of us, and so is Dr Ransford Gyampoh now very active in Saltpond affairs, as the major parties have practically boycotted Institute of Economic Affairs programmes for this election year. The late Headmaster of my alma mater, JW Abruquah, sacked for no reason as part of the Apollo 568 dismissals from the civil and public services in 1970 by the Busia regime, lies in eternal peace at the Saltpond cemetery, just like my mother. What about the headmaster who followed him in 1970 till he was also sacked by General cheampong in 1976,  the late OK Monney? The freshly-minted lawyer and impresario Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah hails from Abura Dunkwa but as a secular Ghanaian, has chosen to run for office to represent his father’s people in the Eastern Region. 

Kofi Baako, the famous political catechist of President Nkrumah, and a Safohen in Lower Town in Saltpond in his lifetime, can never be forgotten anytime one passes by his enduring legacy to his people and to Ghana, Mfantsiman Senior High School. Mfantsiman School happens to be the largest girls’ school in West Africa, and of very good quality too, as its alumni testify. To the present generation, it is his journalist and public speaker son Kweku Baako who we know and admire. Or the man I got to know in 1967 as a family friend, the late James Davis Quakyi, and his son, the political strategist of no mean order and one of the smoothest political operators in this country and former NUGS president, Kofi Totobi-Quakyi.

Women 

What about the women?  Both Nancy Tsiboe and Mrs Margaret Martekie Cudjoe hail from this area, just as the formidable current operator Faustina Nelson, who at her age, is more active on the NDC campaign trail than many a younger person in any of our political parties. I exclude the late Mrs Rosamond Mancell, who though of Abura stock, is not a Dunkwa indigene. Still on women, we have highly educated entrepreneurs like Ellen Hagan of L’aine Services who bring much-needed enlightenment and skill to the business of business. She says she got the bug from her mother, lying serenely in the cemetery at Saltpond.

I note with amusement that the entertainer Mr Beautiful hails from Abura, just like the late musician and partner of Bob Cole, Kobina Okine.

I am writing all this from memory not research and so my readers may forgive some obvious mistakes. The late icon of the Ghana Methodist Church, the Reverend Gaddiel Robert Acquaah was the head of the royal family of the Abura State, inasmuch as my own late father, the late Most Reverend SB Essamuah was Abura by choice, and his last son, the Very Reverend Dr Casely Essamuah, now a missionary in the United States, is of Nkusukum stock! The prominent international mathematician, Professor F K A Allotey is of good Saltpond stock, just as the past Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, is of good Abura stock, notwithstanding their names.

It is strange but true that the sole reason for this excursion into my roots, ancestors and contemporaries is to forestall future bastardisation of my own background for wrong purposes. This attempt may confuse and confound many of my usual readers weaned on the usual fare of public affairs, but it is my story. 

                                                                 

 

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