Although it is said that the Gas in the past, were once ruled by the Akwamus, the Aduana Clan of the Akan ethnic group, the Chief Priest of the Osu Nadu/Klottey Clan has debunked the claim.
According to Wor-Lumor Nuumo Noi Sekanku Kpenuku II, “never in the history of the Ga people have they been defeated in a war nor ruled by anyone.”
The Gas are said to have experienced threats of cultural dilutions and contaminations as a result of being surrounded by ‘powerful’ neighbours like the Akwamus. Many Historians have documented that the Gas were once defeated and ruled by the Akwamus from 1680-1730 and then by the Akyems (1730-1742) and then the Asantes (1742- 1826).
It is also on record that it took the alliance of the British and indigenous coastal forces that kicked out the Asantes in the Battle of Dodowa of 1826.
Telling the story and History about his people, the chief priest said that they (Osu people) settled in Osu around the 1620s where they met the Danes and the Nunguas and a few Gamashi people, occupying the land and not the Akwamus.
He revealed that the Akwamus were warlike people who only traded in slavery thus wanted to get closer to the slave master for easier transactions because they lived on a faraway hill.
Despite admitting a war erupted between the two tribes, he said the Osu people gave them a tough time.
“….So they wanted a new way just to meet the Danes or the British people directly and we were not giving them that chance so they always had to go to war with us.
“But finally, we defeated them. There is no war in history that the Gas have been defeated. No! That is a traversal of truth. There is no war and all the facts are here,” Wor-Lumor Kpenuku II established.
He, however, disclosed that they were only defeated by the British emphasizing that it was only because they (Osu people) did not have ammunition.
The war, he said, was because the Gas refused to pay a mandatory poll tax in 1844.
Narrating the story, he said, “…in those days we didn’t have ammunitions. We only had these flint guns and we had our spears and arrows and our sods and these people are using cannons. They are firing the cannons from the sea. So you cannot fight them. You don’t see them so if they are coming on the land, then we can fight boot for boot.”
