There is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with the naming of some of the major institutional establishments and landmarks after emulative role models and some of the illustrious sons and daughters of the country. But it also goes without saying that such naming or renaming of landmarks and major architectural edifices and institutional establishments after some of the heroic statesmen and women of our proverbial Republic ought to be done through properly and legitimately established protocols or procedural processes, and not merely at the whim or the caprice of any Ghanaian citizen or invested traditional ruler (See “Renaming Accra, Tamale Airports Will Be One of Greatest Legacies of President Mahama – Aziginaateg Says” Modernghana.com 4/14/25).
Indeed, if any contemporary Ghanaian leader deserves to have the Tamale Airport renamed after him or her, it is definitely former President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the Fourth Republican Ghanaian Leader who could most unarguably lay a definitive claim to having diplomatically and masterfully resolved the age-old Dagbon/Yendi Chieftaincy Feud or Crisis, and not Naa Gbewaa, the officially recognized Founder of the Dagomba or the Ancient Dagbon Kingdom.
You see, but for the opportune and the timely intervention and the steely determination of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to find a definitive or a lasting resolution to the age-old Yendi Skin Crisis, as it is sometimes called by scholars and historians, a considerable portion of the Old Northern Region would still be under one of the most barbaric states of siege or primitive tribal warfare anywhere in the postcolonial world. We need to face up to the truth of the reality of those of our leaders who have been most responsible for the peace and the stability that most Ghanaians and, in this particular instance, Dagombas are presently enjoying and stop pretending as if everything desirable or commendable in Modern and Postcolonial Ghana began and ended with any one or two leaders of our own parochial imaginations and capricious choices.
There are, of course, other equally important institutional establishments and monuments and landmarks that could be named or renamed after or for Dagbon Kingdom’s official Founder or Founding Father, other than the Tamale located Yakubu Tali International Airport. But even more significantly, if, indeed, President John “Ouagadou-Nkonfem Flying” Dramani Mahama desires to name or rename any cardinal or major institutional landmark in the country after any of our revered traditional rulers or national leaders, such landmarks and monuments ought to have necessarily either been created from scratch or must have been significantly developed and/or renovated by the President or any Leader so avidly inclined to effect such a name change or institutional or landmark or monument renaming, not merely because any particular leader has the ulterior motive of being statutorily canonized or immortalized shortly down the road, as it were.
We also need to significantly highlight here for the proverbial record books, that the raging and the seemingly intractable Bawku Chieftaincy Crisis and age-old Interethnic Warfare continues to constitute a moral eyesore of unspeakable national embarrassment, primarily because pathological and cynical northern-descended Ghanaian leaders and politicians like President Mahama have made a special preference out of playing cheap, point-scoring political capital out of critical situations that demand a statesmanship approach for constructively and progressively resolving.
In the case of the masterful resolution of the hitherto seemingly intractable Dagbon Chieftaincy Feud or Crisis, the then Ghana’s Main Political Opposition Leader, to wit, Mr. John “Ford Expedition SE Payola” Dramani Mahama, rather scandalously preferred to sophomorically attribute Nana Akufo-Addo’s unprecedented and resonant success – the Archbishop of Akyem-Abomosu’s major character foibles notwithstanding – to the personal intervention of Divine Providence, rather than the remarkable genius and the ingenuity of the former John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-appointed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice.
In the wake of renewed intertribal hostilities and barbaric mayhem in the Bawku Municipality and its environs, one wonders precisely what has prevented the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, from calling on the same Divine Providence to promptly step up to the plate, in American Baseball Speak or Parlance, to effectively and definitively resolve the Bawku Chieftaincy Crisis. It is the brazen and the morally repulsive inability of Ghanaians like Mr. Benjamin Anyagre Azignaateeg, described as Chief Executive Officer of Afrikan Continental Union Consult, to humbly and decorously come to terms with this abject lack of moral decency on the part of “Homeboy Kwame Gonja,” that finds the nation unsavorily stuck in the sort of primitive time warp in which we presently find ourselves, for the most part, as a nation and a people.
What we need, more than anything else, is socially responsible leadership and unblinkered accountability, not the mere renaming of already legitimately canonized national institutional establishments, monuments and landmarks. I have already extensively discussed the imperative need for the retention of the name of that gallant Ghanaian soldier and warrior who led the morally and the politically righteous and auspicious charge to overthrow the unspeakably extortionate and decidedly criminal and globally maligned dictatorship that was the Kwame Nkrumah-led Nazi-inspired Convention People’s Party (CPP). There are far too many problems in the country that are crying for urgent attention than merely sticking dubious and capriciously designed labels on already perfectly prepackaged merchandise on the market. We are much smarter than this as a nation.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]
