Seventy per cent of Ghanaians uphold chieftaincy

Chiefs still maintain "deep-seated" legitimacy in society, with 70 per cent of Ghanaians upholding the institution, raw data from a survey by the Institute of African Studies (IAS), University of Ghana, have shown.

The survey, undertaken in August and September last year, covered 2,500 respondents including the youth, religious bodies, district assemblies, academics and transport unions.

It forms part of a larger project that will culminate in the opening of a centre of learning for chiefs at the IAS.

Dubbed "The Chieftaincy, Governance and Development Project", it is sponsored by the US-based Ford Foundation.

The Rev. Dr Abraham Akrong, an IAS Research Fellow in Philosophy and Religion, told the GNA in Accra on Tuesday that the exercise is aimed at enhancing the capacity of chiefs to cope with changes in time.

"We have been to the National and Regional Houses of Chiefs, traditional councils, district assemblies, civic and social groups to test our agenda for chieftaincy," he said.

"Our findings mean that chiefs cannot be by-passed by Government in its development effort," Rev. Dr Akrong said.

The chieftaincy institution has recently been rocked by many problems, including land and stool or skin disputes, a situation not helped by the little attention paid to it by politicians in the run-up to last year's elections.

Rev. Dr Akrong, who is also the Project Manager, said as part of the survey, stool histories were also gathered to serve as blueprints to succession and land boundaries, to help stem the many disputes.

The National Conference on "Chieftaincy, Governance and Development" held recently in Accra and attended by chiefs from all over the country, was to modify the agenda through consensus.

Rev. Dr Akrong said the IAS intends to use the research findings as a guide for teaching materials for the centre of learning for chiefs.

The centre, to be made open to newly installed chiefs and those already installed, is to increase the intellectual discourse of chiefs so that they can contribute effectively to the development modem.

"Government and society make a lot of demands on chiefs, but most of these demands are not adequately addressed in the traditional set up."

Some of the demands, Rev Dr Akrong noted, relate to the impact of environmental protection on the survival of their communities, negotiation for and use of royalties from stool lands and modernity on rural communities.

Rev. Dr Akrong said sometimes when chiefs are unable to cope with such pressures they compromise their neutrality and traditional authority to align with political parties that they feel could ease the burden.