Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin
Reference is made to a story that was published on your portal on Wednesday, May
22, 2024, with the above caption.
In the said story, the Akyem Abuakwa traditional council launched the 25th-anniversary celebration of the paramount chief of Akyem Abuakwa.
At the said event, the Twafohene for Akyem Abuakwa, Okatakyie Boakye Danquah, sought to highlight the impressive records and achievements of the paramount chief of Akyem Abuakwa for the past 25 years and went further to describe the chief as the “paragon of innovative traditional leadership with few rivals while standing as the most emblematic of Ghana’s national aspirations, struggles, and feats of achievement.”
Firstly, it has become important for us as a people to inform the chiefs of Akyem Abuakwa to stop their continuous practice of using semantics and the media to mislead the public about the traits and status of the Akyem Abuakwahene while concealing the real reckless, domineering, and arrogant attitude of the Akyem Abuakwahene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin.
It is very surprising that despite all the disapproval and disrespect by the public towards the style of leadership of Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin, he still has the courage to celebrate his anniversary in light of his empty achievements.
More worrying is the question: Why should a paramount chief in a rural area use six months to celebrate an anniversary? Where are the resources coming from for the celebrations?
It must be stated that the 25 years of Osagyefo Amoatia as the paramount chief have been characterized by the highest form of individual and collective arrogance, extreme political partisanship, a forced sense of entitlement, an underserved sense of superiority above all other paramount chiefs, deep divisiveness and acrimony among members of the eastern regional houses of chiefs, abuse of unnecessary power with the help of the collaborators in government, and blatant destruction of the environment under his paramountcy.
Indeed, he can best be described as the paragon of destructive traditional leadership with few rivals while standing as the most problematic and arrogant traditional personality in Ghana’s history.
According to the Twafohene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin has bequeathed a legacy
unmatched in the annals of traditional leadership in his 25 years as the paramount chief of Akyem Abuakwa, a feat that perfectly fits Osagyefo Amoatia.
Indeed, it is true that he has bequeathed a legacy unmatched because, in his 25 years as the chief of Akyem Abuakwa, he set up an unlawful checkpoint at the Bonsu junction by a task force allegedly working under his instructions to harass vehicles carrying timber, set up a private militia holding guns in the name of the Okyeman taskforce, and brutally seize farmlands, engaging in illegal sand-winning, and undertaking murderous land-grabbing enterprises in parts of the Eastern Region.
In the 25 years of his paramountcy, several miners of Akyem Potrase were hospitalized following a crossfire with his unlawful Okyeman task force. The Okyeman land protection force exchanged guns and terrorized landowners at Teacher Mante, near Nsawam. Two innocent people were killed at Adoagyiri in the name of claiming ownership of the town, creating tension between the Greater Accra Scrap Dealers Association and Koans Building Solution. The Okyeman task force unleashed violent attacks on the people of Asaman Tamfoe in the name of controlling a community mining project.
In the history of this country, Osagyefo Amoatia is the only chief to have established an extremist traditionalist taskforce that owns arms and that is fanning chieftaincy disputes and engaging in murderous land-grabbing enterprises in the Eastern Region with the help of collaborators as a strategic tool to dominate the people of the Eastern Region.
The constitution of the land forbids the formation of a private militia, and yet Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin has set up a private militia that is terrorizing the people in the Eastern Region, and yet the state police is unable to act on them simply because his family members are in government.
In fact, if there is any paramount chief or a traditional leader in Ghana who has been very lawless with impunity, reckless, intimidating, violent, has really benefited from a particular government, has been a threat to the peace and stability of the Eastern Region and the country, and whose actions and inactions have led to hatred, envy, insults, and greed among the people of other tribes, then it is the Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin.
It is false to suggest that Amoatia Ofori Panin restored public peace and resolution at the eastern region's House of Chiefs. In fact, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin’s tenure as president of the Eastern Regional House of Chiefs saw the most divisive and acrimonious period in the history of chieftaincy in the region.
He sought to deliberately elevate some divisional chiefs in Akyem Abuakwa to the
paramountcy status so that he could consider himself above all paramount chiefs in the region. This led to a fierce battle between him and his colleague, the paramount chief of the new Juaben, Daasebre Oti Boateng. The records are there for everyone to confirm.
Besides, by his singular act of claiming ownership of Adoagyiri, he has created enmity and envy among the people of Akyem Abuakwa and Akyem Kotoku.
How can such a person ensure peace among his colleagues, the Akyem people?
His 25 years as a paramount chief have seen numerous chieftaincy conflicts in almost every village in the Akyem Abuakwa. Examples are Asamankese, Abomosu, Kwabeng, Potrase, Hemang, Kade, etc.
Clearly, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin does not have the clout and character to restore any social order and has never ensured peace in any part of Akyem Abuakwa, let alone the entire Eastern Region.
He should be reminded that there are other paramount chiefs in the specific areas of the Eastern Region, so he should refrain from talking as though he owns the region. He is not bigger or better than the other paramount chiefs in the region.
On the issues of his record in education and health, apart from some model schools built by the government in his area, he has nothing to show. There has never been any intervention by him to help develop education and health in his area. If he has, I guess this is an opportunity for him to make them public.
He was never an environmentalist. All those accolades over the years are all rhetoric to mislead the good people of Ghana, and he has never initiated any action with any foreign personality. The fact is that no one knows him beyond Akyem Abuakwa, and he must desist from tagging himself as a global environmentalist.
It should be noted that, even though Akyem Abuakwa is part of Ghana, it is a small rural community with a very insignificant contribution to the country’s GDP. Besides, the chief has no influence or impact on any other part of the Eastern region or Ghana, and the chief, as either a traditional leader or a private person, has never played any role in the country’s specific or general national aspirations, struggles, or feats of achievement.
As he celebrates his government-sponsored celebration, he should solemnly reflect on his actions and inactions over the years, his arrogant and domineering posture, the reckless atrocities being committed by his task force,
how he can positively impact the lives of his community and possibly reflect on how he will justify the building of his new palace and how he will also live in this country in the unlikely event that the NDC comes to power.
