Ga Mantse
The GaDangme Council has joined the Ga Traditional Council in condemning the recent attack by some Nima youth on elders of the Odoi Kwao family, the allodial owners of the land.
In a statement signed by the President of the Council and the Executive Registrar, Ayikoi Otoo and Dr. Emmanuel Lamptey respectively, the Council “viewed the incident as unacceptable and disrespectful of the GaDangme culture, usages, and practices and sacrilegious of all that Homowo stands for.”
The irate Nima youth, it would be recalled, attacked the elders when they came to perform the traditional sprinkling of cornmeal or ‘kpokpoi’, an annual rite. The youth went ahead to warn them never to come to the suburb to perform the rite.
The Council notes also that the attack is indicative of intolerance and amounts to acts tending to cause a breach of the peace, “which acts do not engender peaceful co-existence and cooperation, and likely to escalate into a tribal conflict between the people of Osu and the stranger settlers.”
The GaDangme Council has over the years, the statement went on, “warned against insolence and disrespect for our culture, language and traditions, including looting of GaDangme lands compulsorily acquired in the public interest, but which end up in the hands of private individuals without any attempt at payment of compensation.”
“We unreservedly condemn the incident and warn against any repetition, and demands an unqualified apology from those behind and involved in what happened,” the statement stressed.
Such acts of challenges to allodial owners of land by strangers, the Council notes, “can lead to forfeiture of their right to remain on the land.”
The security agencies, the Council demand, should call the perpetrators to book.
The GaDangme Council said it learnt with shock and dismay the attack on the elders of the Nii Odoi Kwao Family of Osu, who are the allodial owners of Niiman (corrupted as Nima) lands.
The video footages, according to the Council, “showed some youth of Nima attack and assault elders of the Nii Odoi Kwao Family who had gone to Nima, as part of the Homowo celebrations to sprinkle the traditional Kpokpoi within their ancestral area and on land which is undoubtedly owned by the said Family.
“The youth concerned were reportedly mobilised by a rival stranger Mantse installed by some settlers without the knowledge and consent of the landowners and in competition to another Mantse, which had led to pent up feelings and heightened tensions within the community.
“The youth became incensed during the ceremony, threatened the Elders, and warned the Landlords never to step foot in Nima anymore. In their anger, they scattered the traditional food on the ground, thereby showing great disrespect and contempt to the landowners,” the Council added.
By A.R. Gomda