Another Human Monument Passes Unsung

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

I have always known about the great artistic genius who sculpted the Ghana State, or Praetor’s, Chair – that great son of the soil was, of course, none other than the famous Mr. Kofi Antubam. I have always known about the latter because Mr. Antubam and my maternal aunt, actually my “elder mother,” in Akan customary parlance, Auntie Mary Baaduaa Sintim, schooled together as pioneering students at the School of Art at the now-Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, during the early 1950s. Auntie Mary, now 87 years old and recently settled at Akyem-Apedwa, had also lived with another great human monument while attending the then-Kumasi College of Technology. That great man was Dr. Ephraim Amu, the first African to compose choral music in four vocal parts and the immortalized composer of Ghana’s real and authentic National Anthem, “Yen Ara Y’asase Ni.”

Of course, I darn well know about the Gbeho-composed “God Bless Our Homeland Ghana.” I am also fairly well aware of the recent controversy shrouding the embarrassingly stilted English version of Ghana’s National Anthem. Simply stated, the so-called “God Bless Our Homeland Ghana” is a veritable tongue-twister. On a typical Ghanaian tongue, the National Anthem sounds like a miserable ESL (English as a Second Language) pupil desperately begging to be allowed to sing the far more spirited and majestic “Yen Ara Y’asase Ni” (This Land Is Our Own Land).

Needless to say, I despondently look towards the day when Ghanaians would be adequately enlightened and adequately confident and proud of themselves and their majority Akan tongue to vote Dr. Amu’s magnum opus as that which uniquely, psychically and psychologically best represents the good people of Ghana and the indomitable spiritual legacy of unbested patriotism. But even more significantly, I solemnly look towards the day when Ghana’s National Academy of Music would be fittingly renamed after Dr. Ephraim Amu. In much the same manner and spirit, I fervently pray for the National Theater to be renamed after the prime mover and molder of postcolonial Ghanaian theater, Mrs. Efua Theodora Morgue Sutherland. Alas, of course, I know I am only dreaming. For, the present crop of Ghanaian politicians is composed of the most criminally unenlightened and cynical lot!

And the preceding largely accounts for why when the great designer of Ghana’s Coat-of-Arms transitioned recently, Nii Amon Kotei was accorded the most insultingly piddling obituary of its kind. On the latter score, however, Mr. Amon Kotei is smack-dab in good company, a company of the at once most distinguished and abjectly disrespected Ghanaian patriots, among whose ranks include the astute diplomat and urbane poet Mr. Kwesi Brew. The latter’s initial obituary, which appeared in several Ghanaian newspapers and websites, tragically underscored his woeful under-appreciation. And now we have Nii Amon Kotei’s Mickey-Mouse’s obituary to add to a vast storage of schlocky Ghanaian media fare.

In a piece titled “Ghana’s Coat-of-Arms Designer Amon Kotei [Is] Dead,” which appeared on Modernghana.com and was sourced to MyJoyOnline.com on October 19, 2011, other than the dead man’s existential calendrical markers and the date on which he had designed our national Coat-of-Arms, the critically thinking reader did not get any meaningful sense of Nii Amon Kotei’s having been a great, fruitful and productive life. For someone who lived to be 96 years old, in a country with a life expectancy rate of just under 60, the six-sentence obituary announcing the historic passing of Mr. Kotei felt insufferably more insulting than edifying.

It was also rather annoying to learn that about the greatest honor that the government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had accorded the national Coat-of-Arms designer occurred in February this year, when President John Evans Atta-Mills presented the dying nonagenarian with “six bags each of rice and maize, six crates of soft drinks, six cartons of cooking oils and GH¢ 2,000 cash.”

Anyway, what would it really have taken for any reporter worth such designation to have sat down with a few relatives of the deceased, in order to compose a decent and worthwhile obituary? I am also quite certain that in the Internet Age, serious Ghanaian journalists have easy access to such global newspapers of record as the New York Times, Times of London, Los Angeles Times, The Independent and other equally reputable media institutions and organizations. And then also: Why do we Ghanaians seem to find it so difficult to honor our heroes, other than Kwame Nkrumah?

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###