In this sequel to our article on the Igbo king saga in Ghana, we are now solely focusing on the xenophobic hysteria it has descended into.
How the folly of the fanciful, delusional grandeur of one man could be used to condemn a whole ethnic group and then extended to an entire nation is beyond reason and logic.
We did not mince words when we denounced the attitude and behaviour of some Igbos, which brings all Igbos and other Nigerians into disrepute and negative repercussions. The verdict is on them globally, and they must advise themselves earnestly. The same advice goes to other Nigerians, some of whom, foolishly, have joined in the demonization and vilification of the Igbos.
In this piece, however, we shall denounce the hypocrisy of some self-proclaimed Pan-Africanists who do not see the incongruity of wrapping colonial flags around their necks and spewing xenophobic sentiments while shouting Nkrumah’s quotations. Then, of course, point to the way forward to achieve the Pan-African dream. We shall get there, we know we will! Osibisa says it all.
Let us begin with a few stinging words from Africa’s favorite son (No, we did not make it up; Africans chose him in a New African magazine poll as the Man of the Century, and, in fact, African Man of the Millennium in another survey), the immortal Kwame Nkrumah: “We face neither East nor West. We face forward.”
But what do we say to those who claim to be his ideological children while moonwalking backward into the waiting arms of their colonial masters?
How do we describe those who attend “Pan-African” conferences with flags of their neo-colonial garrisons pinned to their chests like wartime medals – and who turn around and spew nationalistic venom when a fellow African mistakenly oversteps the boundary of a Berlin Conference relic, or missteps on some cultural sensitivities?
The saga over the money-miss-road Igbo King wannabee revealed an orgy of colonial psychosis, wrapped in hypocritical nationalism, and masquerading as Pan-African concern.
The pathetic pseudo-nationalism display of some self-avowed Pan-Africanism is not just laughable – it is dangerous. It reveals the depth of our hypocrisy and why we do not progress in Africa.
We have witnessed many tragicomedies in our lives, but few compare to the self-righteous, sanctimonious nonsense that parades itself in the actions of xenophobes who call themselves Pan-Africanists.
It is something like watching a colonial administrator masquerading as a Pan-Africanist – equal parts condescension, ignorance, and hypocrisy.
The unfortunate buffoonery reveals those who believe that Pan-Africanism is some costume you wear during AU Day celebrations, just before returning to worshipping the neo-colonial deity called “the nation-state.”
We need to question the kind of Pan-Africanist that some claim to be. The Pan-Africanist of Facebook bios and academic panels? Or the Pan-Africanist who understands, as Osagyefo Nkrumah did, that our so-called nations — Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and the rest — are nothing but “geographical expressions,” Frankenstein monsters stitched together by European cartographers with no regard for our ethnicity, languages, history, cultures, or common ancestry? That is why the 1960 Republican Constitution of Ghana has a clause allowing for the dissolution of Ghana when it forms a union with other African colonial contraptions.
Kwame Nkrumah did not see Ghana’s borders as immutable. He had no respect for them. It is unconscionable for anyone who claim to be his adherent to worship or venerate any of the colonial inventions we call countries in Africa.
You cannot serve Nkrumah and the Colonial King at the same time. It is either one or the other. It is either Pan-Africanism or petty nativism. You can’t be a continental unifier in the morning and a pathetic flag-waving jingoist by sunset. You are just a neo-colonial collaborator.
That is the definition of hypocrisy – dangerous, cowardly hypocrisy.
Let’s be clear: the man calling himself “Eze Ndi Igbo” in Ghana may have acted out of cultural nostalgia or even arrogance, but to cast this as a “threat to national cohesion” and all the other claims is not only to betray a profound misunderstanding of Pan-Africanism and history itself, but also to betray a profound misunderstanding of both.
It is a profound unleashing of bottled-up negative images of the others, often associated with hardcore tribalists and racists.
Per the evidence he supplied, the man was properly installed as an Eze in Ghana, similar to how Ghanaians from some ethnic groups have been installing ceremonial chiefs overseas.
Besides, because of the lack of an appropriate word, Igbos interpret “Eze” as king. In any case, it is not true that Igbos do not have a hereditary kingship or chieftaincy system. They do, except the title is passed on to the best candidate in the lineage or clan, as in many African societies.
As noted approvingly in our previous article, the traditional council of the Igbos in Nigeria had since decided that all such ceremonial leaders overseas should be called “Ogbendu Ndi Igbo,” i.e., Leader of Igbos. That should remove the aversion to using the title “king” that Ghanaians have, as they do not even call their paramount chiefs, formerly kings, a relic of the colonial legacy.
Even some openly write that since a king reigns over a country, the Asantehene is no longer a king, as Ghana is a republic, so he is only a paramount chief over the Asantes.
How then could a ceremonial leader of the Igbo migrant community, not even recognized by some fellow Igbos, transform into a potential threat to Ghanaians and become the king of Ghanaians, as some of the pundits on social media were saying?
What kind of nightmarish hallucination is that?
How can a fellow African, a brother by blood and by struggle, an in-law, be more threatening than the foreigners (non-Africans) who dominate Ghana’s construction industry? Or the Chinese, whose changfangs are turning Ghana’s rivers into poisoned sewage daily?
Why do Ghanaians raise their patriotic pitch only when Nigerians open a barber shop in East Legon, or sell bric-a-brac in Suame? Where is this passion when the Chinese are flattening your mountains and devastating your forest reserves? Where is this fervor when Lebanese business people monopolize retail chains in the priciest parts of Accra, Osu, all without fear of mobs locking up their shops?
You do not defend sovereignty by attacking your own African family. That is not patriotism. That is mental colonization. That is the Plantation Mind, masquerading as nationalism.
And to those who posture as protectors of Ghana’s “sacred chieftaincy institution,” do spare us the selective reverence. Where were you when the chiefs sold ancestral lands to foreign mining companies? Where were your voices when traditional leaders turned sacred stools into commercial thrones – wealth stools (hozikpi in Ewe) – for monetary gain?
But suddenly, when a man from Owerri wears a crown in Accra and calls himself “Eze whatever,” it becomes a national emergency?
What arrant nonsense.
No, the problem is not sovereignty. The problem is Black Self-Hatred. The problem is insecurity. The problem is xenophobia cloaked in nationalist robes.
And worst of all, the problem is the bastardization of Pan-Africanism by people who love the slogan but hate the sacrifice.
Let us remind ourselves, painfully if need be, what Pan-Africanism is. Pan-Africanism is not a gala. It is not a conference room at the Mövenpick Hotel with ten-point communiqués that gather dust. It is not a fashion parade of kente-wrapped diplomats sponsored by foreign NGOs.
Pan-Africanism is a war cry against the colonial borders that separate the Ewe in Ghana from the Ewe in Togo, the Akan in Ghana, and the Akan in the Ivory Coast. It is a political commitment to breaking the stranglehold of foreign monopolies. It is an economic integration that prioritizes African labor, enterprise, and dignity.
It is not enough to recite Nkrumah like scripture if you do not live his truth. Pan-Africanism is not a title. It is not a slogan. It is a lifelong commitment to bury the neo-colonial nation-states and build in their places a united Africa—politically, economically, and spiritually.
Simply, it is Africa without the imposed colonial borders.
Of course, it is a dream, but as the wise one said, The Future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
The Common African market head office cannot be sited in Accra for nothing, with its lofty goals debased by xenophobes, and we sit down in silence.
Let us quote Osagyefo Nkrumah again, because some of you need re-education, “The forces that unite us are intrinsic and greater than the superimposed influences that keep us apart.”
And yet here you are, building walls of division against your African brothers while sipping tea with the Chinese ambassador and signing mining concessions with Canadian companies.
Hypocrisy is a sin, and it will kill some of us.
Let us say this without mincing words: If you think that a Nigerian claiming a cultural title in Ghana is a greater threat to your sovereignty than the IMF’s loan conditions, you are not a Pan Africanist but a hypocrite who badly needs to go back to school.
If you can watch your forests fall, your environment destroyed, your waters poisoned, your economy dollarized—yet reserve your outrage for the “audacity” of a fellow African calling himself “Eze” – then you are not a patriot. You are a gatekeeper of the plantation. You are a border guard for the Berlin Conference.
Where was the righteous nationalist indignation when your rivers turned brown under the assault of galamsey machines owned by foreigners, some of whom cannot even pronounce “Ankobra River”?
You say Ghana is a sovereign country. That’s fine. But ask yourself: What kind of sovereignty allows Washington to dictate your economy and Brussels to dictate your policies? You shoo away Igbo traders but welcome American military lily-pad bases.
Give yourself a big applause.
And to the self-proclaimed Pan-Africanists still defending this neo-colonialist screed, we say this: go back to school. Pick up Africa Must Unite and Class Struggle in Africa. Read how Padmore and DuBois—two non-Ghanaians—worked night and day with Nkrumah to nurse Ghana’s liberation. Ask yourself: Were they “foreign threats”? Or were they Pan-African brothers doing the hard work that you today are too cowardly even to imagine?
One of the so-called Pan-Africanists asked: What should the government do?
Easy: The government should stop chasing shadows and start confronting real threats. It should prosecute those smuggling our gold to foreign interests, not perform witch-hunts against cultural associations. The government should draft concrete policies for African integration—joint economic ventures, cross-border investment platforms, open labor markets to all Africans —not PR stunts. Let the owners of Kasapreko and Orijin dream of the 200+ million market in Nigeria. Let the Ghanaian musicians, artisans, coders, and fashion designers think of the massive potential in Nigeria and how they can compete.
Let Ghana take the lead—not in tribal paranoia but continental unity.
Let us enshrine in our constitutions a right of African residence. Let us create real Pan-African IDs, real African passports, and real economic corridors from Abidjan through Accra, Lomé to Lagos, Cape to Cairo, which even Cecil Rhodes, that arch-colonialist, dreamt of. Let’s merge our telcos, refineries, mining companies, etc., for our people’s benefit.
Let the Ghanaian government be reminded that we are Africans first, before Ghanaians or Nigerians. Our destiny is not in defending the colonial borders of “sovereign” countries built by foreigners but in uniting across them to reclaim our land, our minds, and our future.
We cannot speak from both sides of our mouths and expect to be taken seriously.
Calling the government to police the crown of an Igbo man in Ghana, while bowing to Western institutions that see all of us—Ghanaian, Nigerian, Togolese, Malian—as mere Negroes ripe for exploitation, is the height of folly.
Do the hypocrites realize that the Igbo, the Yoruba, the Ewe, the Ga, Hausa, the Akan, the Mossi —all of us were here long before Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, or Burkina Faso became ink stains on the maps of European cartographers?
We are the people of the Niger Basin, the Volta River, and the Sahel. Our kings crossed these lands when London-on-the-Thames was still a muddy village. The Ashanti Kingdom sent emissaries to Dahomey. The Oyo Kingdom’s influence reached the coast. The Ewe and the Yoruba still hold family meetings across “borders.” The Ewes have towns and villages in Lagos State. Ditto, the Ga descendants are in Togo, and some still have close links to Nigeria.
And you now tell us that a cultural title taken up by a Diaspora Igbo man is a “symbolic erosion” of Ghana’s sovereignty?
Until you defend your economic and political sovereignty with the same zest you reserve for attacking Nigerians in Circle and Ewes in Ashaiman, you are just a barking dog guarding the gate of a plantation that was never yours. Your enemies are not your fellow Africans. They are the ones who own your banks, your gold, your cocoa exports, your data, and your policy decisions.
As Nkrumah thundered from the podium of the OAU: “Divided we are weak; united, Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world.”
When will we finally rid ourselves of the shackles placed on our minds by Lord Lugard, Governor Guggisberg, and their spiritual successors in European embassies and Bretton Woods institutions?
Kwame Nkrumah warned us: “Africa is one continent, one people, and one nation.”
But you, with your colonially manufactured borders, now want to defend the sanctity of an artificial entity called “Ghana” against a fellow African wearing a crown? Have you lost your historical memory or just traded it for Western applause?
Ghanaians and Nigerians are brethren. African unity is not a slogan—it is the future. The evolving geopolitical configurations will be merciless to the small and the powerless. Even powerful nations like China, Russia, and Iran are racing to form alliances, and here we are in our pathetic neo-colonial garrisons prancing around with faux nationalistic pride.
Our chieftaincy systems predate the borders our colonizers drew. Sovereignty means economic independence, not paranoia about the Igbo diaspora pageantry. We must fight the IMF harder than the Igbo Ogbendu, who throws parties. We must remove the logs in our eyes—the Chinese miners, the European debt traps, the Arab and Asian mall lords, the Turkish block factories—before obsessing over the toothpick in the eyes of a fellow African.
This is the Pan-Africanism we want. Not this cowardly imitation that gets bold only when a fellow Black man dares to smile too broadly on your land.
All said and done, let us remember what Nkrumah said: “Divided we are weak; united, Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world.”
Let the chattering class choke on that.
©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀làfẹ̀
(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Polemicist-General of the Pan-African Republic)
Kindly subscribe to my Substack: femiakogun.Substack.com
Andy C.Y. Kwawukume
(A free-thinking, Pan-Africanist, Pro-Nkrumahist Ghanaian)
We are unapologetic Pan-Africanists unconditionally opposed to any form or manifestation of racism, fascism, and discrimination.
Our Mission: Stultitia Delenda Est – Stupidity Must be Destroyed!
