“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you super add the tendency of the certainty of corruption”. – English scholar Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834-1902) in a letter to Bishop Creighton.
Our former treatise of the Agyapadie Book and the reactions of notable Akyem personalities ended on the note: “So, this Agyapadie Book is not just a figment of somebody’s imagination…Every single policy decision…has been consistent…a clear manifestation of all that this book is saying?”
This sits well with what we read in our ‘O’ and ‘A’ level Religious Knowledge class in the early 1970s of Acts of the Apostles (Greek: Praxeis Apostolon, Latin: Actus Apostolorum). Acts 1:1-3 “The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach… he was taken up; a cloud received him out of their sight”. This follows Luke 24: 51-53: “And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven”.
According to Iraneus, the Acts of the Apostles was written by Luke, the doctor who moved with Apostle Paul, the tent-maker and rabbi. He was addressing Theophilus (a friend of God), a putative name for people in academia or as in Coptic tradition, a person of eminent quality in Alexandria OR as believed by other scholars, it refers to Theophilus ben Ananus…whoever it refers to, Acts was a sequel to the Gospel of Luke.
Despite the possible ascription of the tag of “madness”, “daftness”, “idiocy”, “lunacy”… we make bold to say, characteristically of us, we will not recoil into our shells, till we find the truth about the authorship of the Agyapadie Book and make a plunge into the content therein. We may “thief tell you” that we are consumed by the motto of our hall, Commonwealth, where Truth stands, and take a stride alongside John Donne: “On a huge hill, cragged and steep.
Truth stands and he that will reach her, about must, and about must go…” “Speech is silver, but silence is golden” says Thomas Carlyle in “Sartor Resartus” (1833). It is like “still waters run deep” and “Empty barrels make the most sound”. OR as in Aramaic: “If a word is worth one shekel, silence is worth two”.
Awfully, atop the cover-page of the Book is: “Restricted”, and we see the pictures of: Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin, the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the Susubiribi emblem, the portrait of Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin again, a very old family picture of Ofori Panin fie, a portrait of Dr. J.B. Danquah. The contents, (1) Foreword (2) Economic and Financial Sector control, (3) The Political Terrain (4) Religion and Chieftaincy, (5) The National Situation As Regards the Media Landscape.
The Foreword; (Par 1) “To our future made up of the present and the unborn for whom this ‘Will’ of a nation is being prepared. To our foremost King, Ofori Panin, the progenies spread across this world to whom alone this sacred document is prepared”
(Par 2): “As the heirs of Nana Apeanin Kwaframa, Nana Kuntunkununku and Ofori Panin our people were never defeated in the wars of old. We were nobody’s subjects, and yet after 1957, we were made to live in the shadows of the descendants of people who never defeated us in war while the Asante kingdom was uplifted to put us in the shade. Relevant questions: Who did these acts and why?
Did anyone “uplift” Asantes and put Akyems in the “shade”? “…the works of J.B. Danquah to restore Okyeman to its original glory were thwarted… “ (our personal experience with Dr. Amoako Baah of KNUST is that when you raise the topic: “Democracy”, he would point to all the books he cherishes most in his library, authored by Dr. J. B. Danquah, Dr. K. A. Busia…)
(Par.3) “With the arrival of Nana, we see the rebirth of a second J. B. Danquah who has come to the rescue… we have to assert our old selves and ensure that we no longer continue to live in the shadows of other kings and people whose forebears we defeated in wars (the import?)
(Par 4)” …Okyeman has not been credited with the appropriate awe and grandeur…” (Par 5) “Currently, with Nana in total control… we have to take over the commanding heights of the essential fabric of the country in order that even in the event that Nana leaves the scene after the mandatory eight years, the sons and daughters of Okyeman would be firmly secured…financially and economically… in the battle to control the destiny of Ghana. (Par7) “In doing this we need to be strategic. We would have to work with other people from some of the diverse ethnic groups including some carefully selected people in Asante.
It would obscure any suspicion that the project is essentially an Ofori Panin Project (Par.8) “Although the Asante group within the current NPP is gearing itself to take over the Party after Nana’s tenure in 2024, it would be ideal if we could work to by-pass them… we could work to pass the mantel over to a non – Akan person preferably from the North under whose presidency we could secure the authority of our take-over project”
(Par 9) “When we have finally captured the command and control sectors of the country for our private use we would then be in a better position to wield the necessary political and economic muscle to manage the destiny of this country under the rein of the house of Ofori Panin.
(Par10) “To be specific, we need to strengthen our efforts to control the mineral resources as well as the electricity and water institutions. The success of this project depends on the way in which we, for the time being, control the judiciary and the press”.
(Par11) “We conclude with a word of caution. Until we have secured the critical sectors under our control, we should minimize the danger of obvious acts of individual corruption in order not to alienate the rest of the population. We must focus on the goal. We must seek first the economic and financial levers and all others will follow eventually.
Ofori Atta (signs?) who is this Ofori Atta? One is at a loss as to why the “Opposition assigns” would write this!
At this stage, without alluding to the authorship of the Agyapadie Book, we dare say everyone is proud of his heritage and origin. However, we thought all these traditional cleavages would be a thing of the past.
We have grown past the pre-colonial and colonial times, the pre-independence period, the Nkrumah era, the coups d’états – till the Fourth Republic: we are all Ghanaians, Do we need to urge all of us to think of Ghana? And Article 1 of the 1992 Constitution states: “The Sovereignty of Ghana resides in the people of Ghana in whose name and for whose welfare the power of government are to be exercised in the manner and within the limits laid down in this Constitution.” Need we say more?
P.S. – It was a printer’s devil for the first paragraph of last week’s article to have: “In effect, they have diffused the tension. “It should have rather read: “In effect, they have defused the tension…” Kindly pardon us.
