The story of how NkrumahFest 2026 became a disgrace — and why it matters
Somewhere in Ellembelle on the day of NkrumahFest 2026, someone hoisted the flag of Senegal. At a festival named after Kwame Nkrumah. At a festival held in the hometown of the man who led Ghana to independence and spent his life fighting for African sovereignty and dignity. The Senegalese flag. At NkrumahFest.
It is tempting to begin and end the story there — because the image says everything about the chaos and disorganisation that has come to define this event under its current political patron. But the flag was, in fact, the least of the embarrassments of NkrumahFest 2026. It was the symptom. The disease runs deeper.
The Man Running the Show
NkrumahFest is funded, organised, and effectively controlled by the Honourable Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah — five-term MP for Ellembelle and Minister for Lands and Natural Resources in President Mahama’s government. He has been the patron of this festival for years, and he has used it generously to build his political profile in the constituency that has sent him to Parliament five times. None of that generosity is in question. What is in question is what he did with that platform in 2026.
He made the purported Awulae Blay IX — a man who claims to be the Paramount Chief of the Eastern Nzema Traditional Area but who is not gazetted, not recognised by the National House of Chiefs, and who is categorically disqualified under the customary law of the very Paramountcy he claims — the co-chair of NkrumahFest 2026. He seated this man above the President of the Western Regional House of Chiefs — the constitutional authority of the chieftaincy institution in this region — who was quietly relegated to the background.
Kwame Nkrumah spent his life ensuring that Ghana’s dignity would never be subordinated to the convenience of those in power. NkrumahFest 2026 subordinated his memory to the political agenda of a sitting Cabinet Minister.
Why the Purported Chief Has No Business Co-Chairing Anything
The purported Awulae Blay IX is the direct nephew of the gazetted Paramount Chief of the Eastern Nzema Traditional Area — the youngest son of the Paramount Chief’s Senior Sister. In the Eastern Nzema Paramountcy, succession rotates between three royal gates. The rule is ancient and clear: you cannot succeed a chief from the same gate as your own. He is from the same gate as his uncle. He cannot succeed him. His installation is not just unlawful under the Chieftaincy Act — it is invalid under the very custom of his own people.
The gazetted Paramount Chief — Awulae Amihere Kpanyinli III — survived an attempted assassination and was compelled into self-imposed security exile in the United States of America. He has now returned to Ghana. He is home. Yet his Royal Palace at Atuabo remains under occupation, the attempted assassination remains uninvestigated, and he is being treated as a nondescript — a person of no consequence — by Hon. Armah Kofi Buah and the Mahama administration. And while all of this is happening, the man responsible for the political patronage that made this situation possible was busy making his nephew the co-chair of NkrumahFest.
Two Standards, One Constitution
There is a man called Tumivolle King Kaku Aka III, the ungazetted Overlord of the Unitary State of Nzema (Eastern and Western Nzema), whose Palace is at Awiaso, Aiyinasi-Basake. He is not gazetted. Because he is not gazetted, the President does not visit him. State agencies do not pay courtesy calls on him when they come to the Nzema area. The constitutional position is applied consistently and correctly.
Yet the NDC National Chairman, Johnson Asiedu Nketia — who has been in Ghanaian politics long enough to know the Chieftaincy Act forwards and backwards — has paid multiple formal visits to the purported Awulae Blay IX. If the Constitution means what it says, this should not be happening. The same rule that governs Tumivolle King Kaku Aka III governs the purported Awulae Blay IX. There is no exception written for ministers’ preferred candidates.
Nkrumah’s Homeland Deserves Better
President Mahama has drawn a firm constitutional line in Bawku. He has made clear that chieftaincy order matters and that the State will enforce it. Eastern Nzema is watching. If the law is the law in Bawku, it must be the law in Nkrumah’s homeland. A festival in the name of Ghana’s greatest son should be a moment of national pride, constitutional integrity, and cultural dignity — not a political rally for an unlawful chieftaincy arrangement, complete with the wrong country’s flag flying overhead.
Kwame Nkrumah deserved better from NkrumahFest 2026. The people of Eastern Nzema deserve better. And the chieftaincy institution of Ghana — which Nkrumah himself recognised and protected in the Constitution — deserves better than to be used as a political instrument by those who have enough money to host a festival and enough connections to fill a programme with friendly faces.
The Senegalese flag has since come down. The constitutional violations displayed at NkrumahFest 2026 have not.
Written By Nana Annor Amihere II
* The author is the Mandimase (Overlord) of the Aiyinasi-Basake Stool Lands and Chief Adviser to the Secretariat of Awulae Amihere Kpanyinli III, Omanhene (Paramount Chief) of the Eastern Nzema Traditional Area, Ellembelle District, Western Region of Ghana. He is Immediate Past National President of the Ghana Institute of Safety and Environmental Professionals (GhISEP, 2016–2022) and Founder of the African Institute of Safety and Environmental Professionals (AfISEP).
Editor’s note: Views expressed in this article do not represent that of The Chronicle
