A day or two to my departure from the Ashanti region to Accra on my way back to London after our successful electioneering campaign that saw Nana Akufo Addo and NPP elected to form the next government, I was approached by a highly worried or a concerned Ghanaian compatriot about the ongoing dubious or criminal attitude of the Omanhene (paramount chief) of Mpasaaso in the Ahafo Ano North Constituency/District in the Ashanti region.
It was reported to me that Nana Minta Dwansa III, the Omanhene of Mpasaaso in the Ahofo Ano division within the Asanteman Council has cultivated that criminal habit of constantly extracting money from all the poor and needy cocoa farmers working on the farmlands under his jurisdiction on the flimsiest of excuses.
On one occasion when one of his sub-chiefs passed, he dispatched his emissaries to every cocoa farmer or cocoa farm owner on his land to collect heavy sums of money from them with the simple explanation that he needed the money to perform the requisite befitting funeral rites for the departed sub-chief.
I had more important issues to deal with so I did not accord the report about the Mpasaasohene the needed attention, investigation and publicity it merited. However, on Monday 26 December 2016 when I phoned to Ghana to wish friends, relatives and old acquaintances a Merry Christmas, I was once again informed of the brazen but clearly criminal pursuit by the Mpasaaso Omanhene Nana Minta Dwansa III, to forcefully collect money from every cocoa or farm owner with purchased or leased farmland within his divisional traditional area.
He had sent two strong emissaries from his Mpasaaso palace with a big notebook containing the names, towns and addresses of all those cocoa farmers on his land, to their abodes throughout Ghana to collect various huge sums of money from them. These emissaries I was told, arrived at Kumawu on Thursday, 22 December 2016. They went to my deceased father’s house, went to my deceased father-in-law’s and many other houses according to the written information in their notebook indicating the location of such cocoa farm owners. They went to Kumawu-Abotanso and many other places.
They would announce to their hosts that they had come to them from Mpasaaso on request by Mpasaaso Omanhene Nana Minta Dwansa III to collect money from them to enable him attend the impending funeral of the late Asantehemaa Nana Afua Kobi Serwaah Ampem II, the mother of Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the “Overlord” of Asanteman.
Is it constitutional or conventional for Mpasaasohene to indulge in such exploitative extraction of money from the cocoa farmers on his land each time he decides to attend a funeral? He quotes how much a farmer must pay but not what the affected farmers would voluntarily want to pay.
He is collecting from the farmers amounts of money depending on the size of their farms, whether they have had or will have a better yearly crop yield or not is not his concern. The amounts of money he is demanding range from GHC200 to GHC1, 600, thus, 2 million to 16 million old Ghana Cedis.
I detest quoting Ghana Cedis in the old currency but the new. However, for the sake of clarity, I have quoted them in both new and old Cedi currencies.
I think the attitude of Mpasaasohene is illegal. I know the farmers pay yearly royalties in one form or the other. Why should he force them to pay for his funeral needs whenever the occasion arises? Is it compulsory that he attends such funerals to display acts of ostentation or opulence when indeed he has not the means himself but to craftily extract money from poor and the needy persons?
I have a lot on my plate but I may take him on should he make it his habit to cleverly steal from the poor farmers.
When I heard that his emissaries had visited my deceased father’s house in Kumawu, old memories started creeping into my mind with tears streaming down my cheeks. It reminded me of the good old days we had as children with my father, his three wives and children at Oseikrom in the Mpasaaso area when our parents were working around the clock in the cocoa farms and cultivating new lands for cocoa crops.
Nonetheless, when my father passed in the year 1981, the cocoa farms he had given to each of his wives for the past seventeen and a half years preceding his death were all seized by his relatives. My mothers and their children were chased out of the farms and my father’s one huge storey building in Kumawu and his other house in Kumasi like criminals. Things could have turned into a regrettable catastrophe if I were in Ghana when my father’s relatives behaved bestially in treatment of my mothers and children as hereby reported.
I travelled to Ghana to attend my father’s funeral where I told his brother who inherited him and their family head, one Opanin Yaw Donkor, my candid opinion regarding their obnoxious treatment of my mothers and brothers and sisters. I have since been holding a grudge against my father’s brother for behaving that stupidly. Ever since inheriting my father, he had not been able to purchase a bag of cement or a pint of paint to repair the houses that are in near-total annihilation.
One thing that hurt me most was the painful treatment one of my father’s nephew, Kwabena Boye, who I took to Accra in 1978/1979 and secured him a job as a bus conductor, meted out to my mothers and brothers and sisters. He led a crusade of his relatives not only to insult my deceased father for willing a part of his property to us but also, to chase my mothers and their children out of my father’s house like chicken.
Anyway, before he died, Kwabena Boye realised his folly, profusely knelt down before my mothers and their children and begged for forgiveness of sins for having wronged them the way he did.
I would not disclose this information if Mpasaasohene had not acted deplorably. I would normally let sleeping dogs lie since my father died in 1981 with all his three wives and many children all dead.
I am sure Mpasaasohene will not push me to take him on unless what he is doing is permissible by the laws of the land. Is it compulsory that he attends Asantehemaa’s funeral if he has no money to do so? I see his action as purely amounting to thievery.
How do people expect me to respect the Asante chiefs who are always engaging themselves in criminal activities, selling lands to people, pocketing the money without carrying out any development projects in their areas and still require their subjects to be subservient to them?
I hope Mpasaaso Omanhene Nana Minta Dwansa III will rethink his decision to exploit the cocoa farmers for what I consider as a complete absurd reason.
From my father’s side, I can well attest to the veracity of the saying, “the death that I shall succumb to is to me not as painful as not having a good person to inherit me. He may use the little money that I shall leave behind for my children for his personal use, leaving my children behind to suffer”. Additionally, as it is said, “As the tail of the cow never permanently remained at the bottom or rear of the cow, so shall the swish (tanned or died cow-tail) never remain in the hands of the fetish priest”? I shall explain these sayings in future.