Tribal and ethnic flames: A recipe for national disintegration

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Koo Pee 10 years ago

This is superficially buttered essay. Got to our police, army, govt, school administrations, courts, and it is dominated by two minority ethnic groups! There is no need to spew needless stories!

This is superficially buttered essay. Got to our police, army, govt, school administrations, courts, and it is dominated by two minority ethnic groups! There is no need to spew needless stories!
Vodoo Xebieso 10 years ago

Could you please name those two minority ethnic groups??????

Could you please name those two minority ethnic groups??????
C.Y. ANDY-K 10 years ago

Exactly! My comment was going to be Dzandu skirting around the subject and not being bold, i.e., intellectually sagacious, in naming names. I therefore found his piece rather hollow.

Then when I saw Koo Pee's heading touch ...
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Exactly! My comment was going to be Dzandu skirting around the subject and not being bold, i.e., intellectually sagacious, in naming names. I therefore found his piece rather hollow.

Then when I saw Koo Pee's heading touching on what I was going to write, I was elated but got deflated quickly when he also skirted around the subject by just casting innuendos. He was just as cowardly as Mr Dzandu. Well, this is a subject for War Lords and the braves, so here I go into the skirmish!:-) Or, battle, depending on the opposition I meet in the bush.

Koo Pee no doubt is referring to Ewes, often accused as monopolising the govt jobs, and another mysterious ethnic group which I can't pin down. Gas? I can't tell. "Northerners" won't fit as there is no ethnic group like that.

Indeed, by 1975, Gas were the only ethnic group found to have [statistically] significantly contributed more personnel to the public service than their share of their population. However, no one accuses Gas of tribalism, and you'd be out of your mind to do so. Decades before the first Ewes, for example, appeared in Accra, probably wearing what the Anlo women had derogatively named "dordzimele" - "it's job I am looking for" - i.e., the canvass shoe, the schools in Accra, Akwapim and the Fante areas had produced enough school leavers to start an unemployment problem in Accra for those seeking the "clerk" positions reserved for Africans. Asantes (those from Ash/R and BA) were just being pacified.

There are other reasons those of us who have read Comparative Public Administration of European govts can give why Gas, Fantes, Akwapims and Ewes (Anlos, Tongus and those from Peki/Awudome) and others within the Gold Coast colony proper before the Asante and Northern Protectorates joined in 1946 cannot be accused of tribalism but I am reserving that. If you had read of the Oxbridge and Etonian dominance of the public admin in the UK and the failed steps taken to curb that, then you have an idea. Same problem in France and Germany.

Now, it is an incontrovertible fact that the accusations of tribalism are sweepingly levelled by some elements linked to the Danquah-Busia tradition from the former Asante Protectorate against Ewes. And this phenomenon arose after the 1966 coup with Dr Akofi Abrefa Bus[h]ia as the evil genie of this ethnocentric attacks on Ewes in order to win political power in the 1969 Gen. Elections. Prior to that, he had already infected Afrifa, the sole officer from the Ashanti Prot. in the Army by 1958, with the canker, leading him to divorce his Ewe wife besides causing tension in the NLC. He (Busia)went on to led the most openly tribalistic and ethnocentric regime in Ghana, with some Ghanaians whose great, great grandparents were born in Ghana being deported or forced to leave the country in the mass expulsion known as the Aliens Compliance Order. The vile adherents of this tradition, we all know, take delight in always threatening to deport Ewes to Togo, as if the lands Ewes live on in the VR belong to they the Akans! Oh! They occasionally also call for the killing of Ewes too. When I mentioned these things in the early '90s on Okyeame, people like Azar (Prof. Asare) and Dr Kofi Ellison (he didn't even know that cocoa is grown in the VR too)denied their veracity. They lived to swallow their words.

They are the same people who are fond of ethnocentric stereotyping of other ethnic groups, including even some from their own ethnic group. Did one lawyer Obeng not run a column in The Chronicle in the early '90s devoted to poking fun at Ewes, with the adventures of Ablavi from Togo with her pikin on her back?

What was the reaction of Ewes to these stereotyping, vilification and demonisation, one may ask? Later.

I would just like to point out that the late Komla Dumor reacted by running that unsavoury "Ayigbe Jokes" series on MyJoy Fm. I was shocked when I first heard it. Something like that would have put him and the owners of MyJoy in prison for breaching their anti-vilification laws.

Dzandu, what was your reaction then? Judging from what you wrote here, you probably pretended not to be an Ewe. So pathetic! Don't skirt around the problem.

Andy-K
GORGORDUTOR 10 years ago

Na inooh Nyebro, megavor!! Bright side is majority of Akanfu know better!! They just have to stand up to these backward blinkered bloviatimg bastards!! We are still marrying each other till today! These ignoramuses would prob ...
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Na inooh Nyebro, megavor!! Bright side is majority of Akanfu know better!! They just have to stand up to these backward blinkered bloviatimg bastards!! We are still marrying each other till today! These ignoramuses would probly kill themselves if they know the stats on intermarriage among Akans& Ewes in particular, especially how many prominent people from both groups have intermarried. There is hope!!! Nyebro megavorlo!!
CHRISTOS CHRISTOFF 10 years ago

THOSE TWO

THOSE TWO
GORGORDUTOR 10 years ago

Idiot there is no majority ethnic group in Ghana kwasea panyin ti seh Wu!! You are a selfblinkered fool. Name a so called majority ethnic group ODONKPO like your type. ABUAFUNU of your type are self deluded nincompoops who t ...
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Idiot there is no majority ethnic group in Ghana kwasea panyin ti seh Wu!! You are a selfblinkered fool. Name a so called majority ethnic group ODONKPO like your type. ABUAFUNU of your type are self deluded nincompoops who think yeh Akanfu yeh dawsu kyen obiaria Ghanaman yeh ya adie, yeh beh dzi yeh aman. Wu yeh Guanni, Pepeni, Nkranni, Ayigbeni peh Wu bebi traa, mu yeh ahorhuo ni akwaafu, yeh traa mu Su!!!! Specimens like yourself are a disgrace to Akans and a danger to Ghana as a whole. 41 years after the death of CIA controlled asset Busia who injected this nation wrecking virus into our body politic many Ghanaians from all ethnicities are suffering from this odius political fever. The difference between Akan chauvinists and other ethnic chauvinists is simple: Akan chauvinist are deluded about their non existent superiority and right to rule, other chauvinists simply react to this obnoxious frame of mind. STUPID IDIOT the kind that loves to say Gamei who welcome Akans to settle and sell them land are stupid, while crying and berating Asante chiefs for doing the same in Asanteman!! USELESS BRAINLESS IDIOT!!
Rev.Jimmy 10 years ago

"Demand and Supply" and changes in variables.Ghana was started with around 6 million people.Today it is about 30 million.There are more people fighting for few opportunities.The tribal card is a consequence of the population ...
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"Demand and Supply" and changes in variables.Ghana was started with around 6 million people.Today it is about 30 million.There are more people fighting for few opportunities.The tribal card is a consequence of the population growth.Accra use to be have about 400,000 residents,today 4 million.The country needs to be opened up.Cteate opportunities for people to thrive in their regions.The law of nature says people will fight each other in a condition with limited or scarce recourses.Tribalism is just a tool to get ahead.
Justice 10 years ago

That's why european countries removed ethnicity from their countries but damn they all know where they orinated but they don't talk about it. They talk about their country and nothing else.In ghana we do the opposite cos we ...
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That's why european countries removed ethnicity from their countries but damn they all know where they orinated but they don't talk about it. They talk about their country and nothing else.In ghana we do the opposite cos we are just idiots.
CHRISTOS CHRISTOFF 10 years ago

You should know this in Ghana,,,,,EWE NEPOTISM at work places and extension into all aspects of civil service and government.What is going now is nothing knew. EWES have ben problematics for all other tribes in GHANA

You should know this in Ghana,,,,,EWE NEPOTISM at work places and extension into all aspects of civil service and government.What is going now is nothing knew. EWES have ben problematics for all other tribes in GHANA
AKRANTIE-BINI-EATER 10 years ago

So you so called "Great" Asantes fear Ewes like these?

So you so called "Great" Asantes fear Ewes like these?

francis kwarteng 10 years ago

Christos Christoff,

Is this what you can say?

Can you share any data with us rather than dabbling in unfounded allegations?

Give us something better than this concocted illogical xenophobia, tribalism, and ethnocent ...
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Christos Christoff,

Is this what you can say?

Can you share any data with us rather than dabbling in unfounded allegations?

Give us something better than this concocted illogical xenophobia, tribalism, and ethnocentrism!

Thanks.
professor 10 years ago

Ewes are just bad, when you have an akan name they just create problems for you, but Akans are blessed by God, we are independent and does not need a political party for positions and appointments,

Ewes are just bad, when you have an akan name they just create problems for you, but Akans are blessed by God, we are independent and does not need a political party for positions and appointments,
Benjamin A 10 years ago

May God bless you for this write up. What you have done can only be rewarded by God.

May God bless you for this write up. What you have done can only be rewarded by God.
Abu 10 years ago

Thank a lot for this article. People forget that there is bad nut in every tribe. God bless you.

Thank a lot for this article. People forget that there is bad nut in every tribe. God bless you.
Ghana 10 years ago

Of late it's very difficult to come by interlligent reasonable people like you.
We have a lot of these ignorant people parading with accolades they don't deserve.

The resin is because, they are completely ignorant about l ...
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Of late it's very difficult to come by interlligent reasonable people like you.
We have a lot of these ignorant people parading with accolades they don't deserve.

The resin is because, they are completely ignorant about life!!

Thanks for this beautiful piece!!!

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Tribal and ethnic flames: A recipe for national disintegration

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