Nana Akuoko Sarpong: Lawyer, Chief and Uncommon Politician (Part 1)
The other day, in a discussion on momentous periods in our political past, I noted that 1979 was the most eventful year since our independence in March 1957. It just so happened that that was also the very year I began college education at the University of Ghana, and for those of us who were interested in public affairs and followed events, it was truly a year of marked contrasts in personnel and style of governance for the people of this country.
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We had three governments, two military and one civilian, in 1979. General Akuffo’s Supreme Military Council 2 lasted till June 4, replaced in a bloody coup we strangely call a mutiny, which also left the scene, transferring power to the first and only elected government of the Third Republic, led by Dr Hilla Limann, on September 24, 1979.
Events, big or small, are always the conscious or unconscious acts of men and women who, with some effort, can be identified, and their role and impact assessed in subsequent narrations. Sometimes, we even forget some seemingly insignificant detail in our narration in our zeal to give emphasis to the matters that leap easily to the eye.
The politics of the current Agogohene, Nana Akuoko Sarpong, is one of such narratives in our past. Many of us believe he was only a former Secretary in the PNDC military government of Chairman Rawlings, and then Minister of State in the first civilian NDC government of President Rawlings. Nana Agogohene’s political past is not only a rich tapestry of personal achievement but is one of those mirrors through which we can apprehend clearly some of the whys in our politics.
These gratuitous gaps can actually result in a half-baked appreciation of the things that came together to make a rich textured history of our nation. Just last week, I noticed that none of the fulsome tributes to the late Roland Alhassan, who was the running-mate to Professor Adu-Boahen for the 1992 elections, contained the significant fact that at the time of the December 31, 1981 coup, he was the leader of the PFP opposition in Parliament. It was that position which made him the leading contender to being chosen to partner Professor Adu-Boahen 11 years later.
The very first time I met Nana Akuoku Sarpong was in the early years of the first government of the 4th Republic in his office in the State House. He correctly identified me when I mentioned my name, but that did not jolt me into wondering who he was, even though I knew he was a Popular Front Party Member of Parliament for Asante Akyem North in the 3rd Republic.
The gap in my personal knowledge is easily explained. The PFP had only one MP in Greater Accra, Samuel Odoi-Sykes, who became the Minority Leader in 1980 after the Kwaku Baah affair which eventually resulted in the expulsion of the latter from the party. Mr Odoi-Sykes normally led available PFP MPs to attend weekly meetings of the Legon students branch of the party. President Kufuor will sit quietly and give rides to some of us after meetings. Kwadwo Mpiani was always in the company of Thomas Broni and Kwabena Addae-Mensah, plus a host of others like S K Boafo, Shanni Mahama, Roland Alhassan, and others who have passed on or retired from active frontline politics.
But the Agogoghene never came to our meetings. I finally gathered the courage to ask him over three decades later why he never shared in the camaraderie that we had with our party leaders in those days, and his answer led me to today’s excursion: “I was a chief”, implying here the several royal engagements which kept him away from our meetings. Of course, this was not sufficient because the national chairman of the PFP to which he belonged was also a notable chief, Alhaji Yakubu Tali, the Tolon-Na. But Nana was also a socialist. A socialist MP and an important Ashanti chief in the capitalistic PFP of Victor Owusu?
This certainly was an opening which would excite anyone with a modicum of interest in our tumultuous political history. Victor himself, and others like R R Amponsah and Kurankye-Taylor, had left the leftish CPP to join Baafuor Akoto to found the National Liberation Movement after the 1954 elections. So there was a story here waiting to be told of the unique beliefs of the Agogo chief. Nana Akuoku Sarpong was willing to tell me who he is, his memory sharp and his clarity of expression very evident.
For consumers of news generally, Nana has been in the news lately associated with valedictory ceremonies organised by the old students of Accra Academy for a former president of the old students association and school board chairman who has been instrumental in the construction and completion of three dormitories for his former school, with one of them named for him. Certainly, this is a person of known beneficial public acts.
Kwame Akuoku Sarpong is his real name, and he transferred it to the stool of Agogo when he was enstooled in 1975, meaning he has been an important member of the Asanteman Council for the past 39 years. He was called to the Ghana Bar in 1965, that is, he has been a lawyer in good standing for the past 49 years. At least I knew he was a leading Cape Coast lawyer when I was in secondary school in the 1970s. He had a flourishing successful practice at the bar from his Chapel Square chambers.
The answers to the two nagging questions of why he became an MP for a party whose ideology he did not share, and later worked with President Rawlings would fill a book, and would not bore you one whit. I will try and settle here for the highlights.
In his student days at Legon, Nana was not merely a socialist, but a Trotskyite, meaning he was a follower of Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary colleague of Lenin and Stalin, and considered Dr Nkrumah and the CPP to be false socialists, a viewpoint fuelled by his attendance of lectures by Dr S G Ikoku, the Nigerian leftist intellectual who had found a congenial political home in Nkrumah’s Ghana. In short, though a leftist, he was no Nkrumaist. The confluence of beliefs and events earned him only a week in detention after the death of Dr Danquah on February 5, 1965. Why was Nana detained?
Nana knew Dr Danquah at the Accra residence of the Okyehene in Adabraka, which was a short distance from where he was staying with Mr Amfo-Kwakye, a Begoro man and a friend of Dr Danquah. Young Nana had taken a liking to him as a distinguished public figure. As President of the Commonwealth Hall Junior Common Room, he had planned to have a few words said in memory of Danquah at dinner that day, but his companion, Lawrence Otu Cantey, with whom he walked into the dining hall, preceded him to ask for a minute’s silence in memory of Dr Danquah. This act, and what became of Nana and his accomplice, was just a slice of the intense political animosities on campus, and the wider society in Ghana’s First Republic.
The immediate cause of detention for both Nana and Cantey was the subsequent ponding of the CPP party flag by Commonwealth Hall students later that night as Nana slept, having declined to join at the invitation of Cantey, in the symbolic condemnation of the government. Cantey was taken away the next morning by a powerful political posse led by Kofi Baako, N A Welbeck and Kweku Akwei, while Nana had gone to lectures. E.V. Mamphey of the Interior Ministry and T.O. Lindsay of the Special Branch came for Nana himself after his return from lectures in the evening of the same day. The Special Branch, of course, is what is known today as the Bureau of National Investigations, our equivalent of the American FBI.