1. GHANA’S INDEPENDENCE GOLDEN JUBILEE ANNIVERSARY
ROUNDTABLE CONFERENCES
Theme: Reflections on Fifty Years of Ghana’s Independence:
Interrogating the Past, Shaping the Future
Sub theme: Rule of Law, Government and The People
Date: 23rd-24th October 2006
Venue: La Palm Royal Beach Hotel
LAUNCHING CEREMONY
Chairman: His Lordship Justice George Kingsley Acquah
(Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana)
Welcome, Opening Remarks and Introductions by
Prof. Kofi Darkwa:
We are about to start the function. We would like to start with a prayer. May I call on
Rev. Dr. A.A. Akrong.
PRAYERS
Rev. Dr. A.A. Akrong: Please bow down your heads and let us pray.
TOPIC: THE ELECTORAL PROCESS AND THE
DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE
Dr. Amos Anyimadu:
Thank you very much Mr. Chairman, being in this business, I myself have organized a
few of this….. I can perfectly understand the situation that I must confess that am in a
very difficult situation because I was finishing a paper on human security when I got a
call from Auntie Irene I have to come and comment on a presentation by a speaker. I said
well, comment is not too difficult so I drove straight here and immediately I got here she
said no, no the agenda has been changed, we are talking on elections and just about 5
minutes ago she stuck a piece of paper with topics in my hands, am in a very difficult

2. situation but I have to say am a political scientist, infact I must confess to you the only
reason why I came to Ghana for my Ph.D was to learn some history because when I was
doing my thesis I realized I have to study much more Ghanaian history and that is the
primary reason why I returned to this country and I have been stuck here since.
Am very happy to be here and especially having benefited from your session at the
OAUTTU conference centre a few days ago, and seeing the sterling performance of the
paramount chief from Tumu especially, I think I should do my best and also seeing so
many of my important mentors including Nana Kwabena Nketia here. As a matter of fact
the last paper I wrote on elections I gave a paper to Nana and he characteristically tore it
apart so am going to try remember his comments and to try to speak around that. I will
just read the topics, the points am supposed to speak to:
1. Provide a general background to the electoral processes in Ghana before and after
Independence.
2. Which institutions have been responsible for elections, referenda, and plebiscite in
Ghana.
3. Discuss the electoral processes with regards to the election of the president.
4. Comment for example on the use of the electoral college in the election of the
ceremonial President in the Second Republic.
5. Compare the electoral processes in Ghana with other places for example the U.S. and
the United Kingdom.
6. Do the electoral processes suiting our purposes and enhance the development of the

3. democratic culture, can there be any improvements.
Now as you can see these are very tall menu that Auntie Irene has given me and of course
I do not intend to answer or even respond to all of them, not being a historian myself I
will not try to talk about the general background to elections at all. Now as a matter of
fact just this morning, I myself I do not really study macro politics my area of research is
very much on Telemetric and human security so when people asked me to talk about big
politics I get a bit frightened. Luckily for me yester night Joy FM rang me that I was
going to speak on political parties and democracy this morning so suddenly I had to
think about macro politics and that is where am going to come from.
The point that I want to make is that we are facing a very Eurocentric challenge in how
we approach democratization in elections generally. I think the dominant frameworks for
the study of democratization are fundamentally flawed, infact I do not see that flawed, I
think that within the past five years or so at least on an academic basis a lot of these
theories on transition to democracy have been quite comprehensively rebuttal at a very
least but somehow I think there are certain laps between what happens on the academic
front and what happens for lack of better word, what happens at the activist front, what
happens in terms of the dealings of international aids establishment and so on and so
forth so that I think for instance as historians you perhaps have much better advantages in
advising us on the meaning of our present conjuncture. From the political science
perspective the dominance framework that we use in analyzing democratization is really,
this is from another view of modernization theory but it is really like a number of planes

4. trying to take off from an airport.
The dominant framework is something called the transition to democracy so that at least
for in Ghana for instance for the past 15 years or whatever we have been transiting to
democracy. Now I and infact, increasingly many other people I think are beginning to
see that we are actually not in a transition. We are actually in a quite stable situation. In
other words, many people accept that we are not fully democratic today, the expectation
very much is that the situation we have today is a quite temperate situation and we are
going to move from the situation to something else which people call full democracy or
the consolidation of democracy or whatever. Now what I have to suggest is that a
situation in which we are in today is a quite stable structure form so that we have to take
it very, very seriously. We are going to be stuck to the process which is neither fully
authoritarian nor fully democratic for a very, very long time. So that we should not take
our present situation as a temperate situation and always hoping that the time that they
come back and they were not and then the Executive Secretary of the United Nation
Research into Institutional Development says that one of the problems in analyzing
Africa is that we are trying to make Africa what she is not and what she cannot become
and that systematically built-in a certain Afro-pessimism because Africa is not likely to
be democratic the way in which Norway for instance, is democratic. Ghana is not going
to be democratic the way in which the United State for instance, is democratic so I want
to suggest that as historians you have a very good comparative in trying to specify the
structural differentiation of the Ghanaian social structure. What is specific from our
history and other things not necessarily Ghanaian but at least in Ghana type societies.

5. That is a general point from which I am coming from, now if I try to link this to some of
the points Auntie Irene has given me, one of the most important point that I find is the
issue of which institutions have been responsible for elections in Ghana.
There is a certain dichotomy in the way in which Ghanaians see elections. Outside, many
people including many professional groups see the administration of elections in Ghana
as very, very good. I remember attending a conference at IDA i.e. International
Democratic Institute in Stockholm, Sweden and the executive director was, he literally
thought Dr. Afari Gyan was a god because for him he was such a good election
administrator and trying to flatter I do not have a details here but actual a World Bank
report, I think it was a world development report which they actually had the
administration of elections in Ghana as a boss of good practice but of course the
Ghanaians here, we turn to see our elections administration much more critically and I
think there is a historical reason for this. I think the historical specifics that we have to
look at is Nkrumah’s administration, it is a plebiscite to turn Ghana into a Republic in
1960. Now if you look at Jeff Obeng’s accounts in…………. is very, very clear one,
Nkrumah knew he was going to win anyway because he knew that the issue of turning
Ghana into a Republic was something that will never have a no return and for that reason
he was absolutely determined to ensure a very transparent election at least in terms for
the logistics in organizing elections so that from the 1960 election he noticed that the
administration of elections in Ghana turns from being organized by the Ministry of Local
Government or equivalent into a sort of a semi-autonomous entity at least. And of course
in the processes after Nkrumah with the various commissions including the Akuffo Addo

6. Constitutional commission, there was a very clear strategy for making the administration
of elections independence so that if you compare Ghana to the francophone countries, for
instance where even up to today most of these countries’ elections are organized d by the
executives more or less, mostly the ministry of interior something like that or other
African countries that is the East African countries where the executives are much more
involved in elections. You see that in Ghana going to Justice Kingsley Nyinah, the late
Justice Abban and even before the commissioner for 1968 Justice Azu Crabbe I think, we
have always had a quite independence trend and I think that is a structural disequilibrium,
that is a big fort in the roll, that is at least, I will say that is important historical conjecture
in 1960 makes the process irreversible so that for instance, if suddenly Ghana is to have
elections conducted by Ministry of Local Government or the Ministry of Interior that will
seem very, very strange.
I must confess I do not really remember specifically about the elections of the president
in the Second Republic. I remember the interesting thing that was Busia’s pressure on the
military commission, the three-month commission to hand over to a proper president and
that is a much more controversial issue. What I want to say is that I do not know what is
happening in the archives but before it became whatever it is now public records or
whatever, they had a project called the Records of Ghana Project or something like that
and the papers of the NLC Constitutional Commission were actually available in the
archives. Infact, I remember the record number of NLCCC something like that. I used it
long time ago and when my good friend Garret Austin came back to Ghana and referred
him to it he could trace it in the archives, it must be changed over but there is excellent

7. documentation of that somewhere in the archives, all the minutes of the Constitutional
Commission and the political whatever and I remember the Siriboe Committee report are
also fully documented in the archives. So that is something that can easily be cross-
checked.
Now the issue about whether our electoral processes enhanced the development of
democratic culture, I think that is in a very tall order. I mean democracy is way beyond
elections, infact our new category that has emerged in political science is something
called Illiberal Democracy. It was put together by a columnist of a News Week who also
writes a historical account, Frederick Sakari who has an Eastern background and
essentially the whole point about illiberal democracy is that elections are not enough.
You can have countries which have mastered the electoral process and still failed to be
democratic. Infact, I was part of the beginning of this whole argument that we are not in
a transition anyway, we are in a stable situation which is neither democratic nor
authoritarian.
Now the final point that I want to make isthat can there be any improvement, definitely. I
think the most important point in Ghana today is, I said on the radio today that the
modern state behaves like an ostrich. I mean we have a certain international amnesia on
many of these things. Last Sunday I was at a most remarkable event at Akropong, Nana
Ampem Darko better known as George Darko gave a musical tribute to Nana Dokua to
mark her 40th anniversary on the throne as Queenmother of Akwapim. Now, what struck

8. was the, the term that I want to describe the Historical Associations’ event at OAATU
whether I will use again for the traditional authorities was the co-venire authorizing of the
traditional state. We have to spend a quite a time in the palace and I also saw how the
modern state, the District Secretary and company related to the event. Now it is very
obvious that the traditional state has a degree of authority which the modern state does
not come near. It appears to me that unless we resolve this kind of shadow politics, this
kind of artificial tension between the so-called modern state and the traditional state. At
the end of the things that happen, within the modern state in their relation will be very,
very artificial. I mean, do not want to put him down but actually at the ceremony last
Sunday, somehow, let me be careful, the person who made the least impact, if I might put
it in such undiplomatic term is the District Secretary because he was there pushing very
much an official agenda but when George Darko spoke, when the M.P. spoke through a
very traditional medium, you could see that the people correlate to that in a very, very
powerful way. So that I think that we have a lot of fundamental re-thinking to do in this
our Jubilee Year. We really serious have to re-construct basic blocks of our political
structure. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman’s Response
Thank you Dr. Anyimadu. We will now take the second presentation and react to the two.
Mr. Chairman:
Thank you very much Madam Asafo. Ladies and gentlemen, we have listened to Dr.
Anyimado and Madam Asafo, as were advised at the beginning, they have been drafted in

9. at short notice nevertheless they have been actually been able to give us the important
ideas around which should focus our discussion. Am reminded by a very important point
that was made by Kwabena Sakyi decades ago about constitutions being born and not
made in the sense that they have to be located within the historical and cultural milieu. It
appears to me that one of the problems that we are having with our attempt to establish
democratic systems the way that other cultures have it, have resulted in a situation that
Dr. Anyimado has described where we think that we are in a transition but his
presentation that transition must last decades even possibly centuries. So it is about time
we actually got to appreciate that it is going to be……. For sometime so we want to make
it workable rather than kind ourself into thinking that within a couple of years or so we
will graduate to what other peoples and what society calls democratic institutions. I now
like to invite reactions, questions and submissions with respect to both presentation this
afternoon.
Nana Akuoko Sarpong’s Remarks:
Mr. Chairman I think maybe because of the way Dr. Anyimado made his presentation, the
real issues did not come out of his presentation. The fundamental issue is democracy is
culture, now what we are missing, we missed that in 1957, we missed that in 1960
Constitution; and because it is the way Nkrumah started with his championship of the
independence course. The moment he tried to alienate the fundamental institution of
chieftaincy into the system when he saw it as the institution of enemy to what they
wanted to do that is the opportunity that we missed in 1960. Later on Nkrumah tried to,
that is why he started calling himself Osagyefo and then the panoply of traditional
institution to open through parliament and so on and if you remember, he refused to
appoint or to get a vice-president and what he intended to do was that he always get a
presidential commission constitutive of traditional chiefs. He wanted to come to terms
with that but he did not come out clearly. We lost that opportunity also in 1968. That
fundamental issue we have two major parallel system of government. Unless we come to
terms to see that democracy in this country cannot grow will now take on board this huge
institution of chieftaincy which is now controlling our lives. Like it or not, of course
when a politician gets power he does not, he wants to see power indivisible but unless we

10. come to terms and make sure that the institution of chieftaincy is brought on board like
the way you were saying it in Akropong with that small event it will show you the
dichotomy. I see this more so before because I have been a member of the executive and
now am a retired traditional ruler so take me seriously. So you the fundamental
difference, you see that the whole system of the new creation is so decent from the people
and we have not made any attempt to make the two. The 1992 Constitution makes only
references to guarantee the institution of chieftaincy they should be represented on this,
they should be doing this and so on but it does not come to terms in actually taking the
institution on board as part of the institution of governance of this nation. So is the
bureaucracy and the political element who are controlling power when the real power lies
somewhere, Nana Nketia am sure you will bear me out, you were making that point along
something, so we are actually ostriching. Now, unless we accept that these two parallel
systems should be converged as checking part of our system, the whole concept of
democracy will be lost to us and the nation has to make a decision. If you do not make
that decision you will just be dancing around the problem and you will be thinking that
you are practicing democracy, you are really not practising democracy and it will be
eluding us for a long, long time for the rest of our lives.
Comment/Question
Mr. Chairman, political parties are supposed to be democratic institutions but in Ghana
we have witnessed a lot of weaknesses, infact, they have become rivalry institutions. I
want to know whether Dr. Anyimadu would want to suggest an institution of participatory
democracy in our parliament instead of having political parties. The other thing is the
executive, am wondering whether we need to continue with the percentage instead of
ordinary winning votes
Dr. Anyimadu’s Response
On the issue of from the way you presented participatory democracy, I have a suspicion
that, that will be beyond political parties or participatory democracy will be stronger than
democracy as we have it. Well, my point will be that we are struggling even with
democracy, logically we are going to perform even worse with strong democracy. I take
your points political parties are not democratic institutions in Ghana. As a matter of fact

11. the point that I was making on radio this morning is that a very fundamental failure in our
political structure right now is that the political parties are simply too big. I was very
happy when I heard a paramount chief of Tumu in your last conference criticizing the
avoidance of discrimination Act because I fully agree with him on that, the avoidance of
discrimination Act December 1957 which has actually become consensual mantra in
Ghanaian political talk. I think that is a little respect is a very deliberating Act because
what makes it is that, infact the Act which still is the background for the registration of
political parties is not only strictly enforced as you all know but because it is there and
going back to my point that when it comes to formal politics we really play the ostrich.
We pretend that we parties which have offices in ⅔ of the district and so on and so forth
so that what you have is these parties have actually become very, very big political
machines and the lines for accountability within the party is almost impossible to
examine so that I will actually will not want to move for if you want stronger democracy,
I want to move for a more cyndicalyst kind of idea where people from smaller parties can
relate and so on and so forth.
On the next point, Nana knows that I perfectly agree with him in a point of facts I have
been to his palace in Agogo at least once to learn from his deep experience. Yes, and as I
said we are not going to go anywhere in this country until we work hard in a certain more
stable arrangement between the para-governments that we have. I think the 1992
Constitution in almost every respect took several steps backwards I mean this whole
point of our chiefs not being involved in politics. So on and so forth, it is really a
backward step undoubtedly. Having said that, the resolution on that question was not an
easy one, am here and perhaps I have to agree with Nana a bit. Chieftaincy is not
democratic, it might be legitimate but it is not democratic and in our modern political
system what we are trying to ensure is a certain form of democracy. So there is a certain
structural tension between the modern political system and the traditional political
system. Now I think that that tension can be managed more creative than we are now. In
point of fact right now as far as I can see formally we are pretending the tension does not
exist, I mean there are all sorts of day to day ways in which the politician and the
traditional authorities try to manage it but even if we get beyond that amnesia we have

12. appreciated that we have a very, very difficult situation. In South Africa right now the
role of traditional authorities in governance is becoming a very, very hot topic. We are
pretending that it is not an issue but when we get beyond the pretending, am suggesting
that we still have a very difficult problem to contend with. Thank you.
Nana Akuoku Sarpong”s Response
Sorry to disrupt Mr. Chairman, I know that looking at it at a distance, your description of
it as undemocratic man hold but what am saying it we have to find a way of coming to
terms with that. Unless we come to terms from it the democracy because we are run two
parallel systems and the most powerful system is on the ground. I mean relative to that
the institutions of the state, the new ones are mostly artificial and that is the point that I
am making. The point I am making is that we have to find a way of accommodating it in
one form or the other but unless we come to terms with that, am afraid the democracy,
that w are looking at it from different angles.
Nana Asiedu Boafo’s Comment
Mr. Chairman, I think Dr. Anyimadu made a categorical statement and I do not think it
should be allowed to go. He said categorically that chieftaincy is not democratic, he is a
typical representative may be before I got into it I will have been typical tool of what my
father used to call ‘Akrakyefuo’, the western educated elites, they look at western concept
and they try to define local concept in those terms. I do not know how a Japanese for
instance, will call imperial system there which has sustained a dynamic economic growth
over the past century which had made the Japanese able to manufacture aeroplanes, made
the Japanese to manufacture the first aircraft that carriers that nearly conquered the far
east from both the British and Americans. I don’t see how a Japanese can stand up one
day and say oh! The imperial system is not democratic. Now in the Ghanaian context, is
rudimentarily democratic in the sense that is an Electoral College system. If for instance
from my village in order to contest to be a chief, you must belong to a certain clan which
is equivalent roughly to being a paid up member of a political party. Like if you are not
‘Asona’ where you went Akropong, you can’t contest for Akuapem here so you must
belong to that clan in the first place and then when the times comes, the members pay

13. their nomination fees by going to see paying drinks money to certain power brokers like
the Queenmother, the Abusuapanyin, the Krontihene. Everyone will be taken on board
then after that when a short list is made a lot of consultation takes place before the final
selection is made and then when you are presented to the general public, the general
assembly of the town. I f the people don’t like you, the electors have to withdraw you.
First, second time, third time if you don’t still give the people the choice that they want,
they have the power to get into political party concern, the Asona, the Oyoko, Bretuo
and carry off their choice to be chief . So I am not saying it is entirely democratic in the
western sense but it is totally democratic in our culturally milieu and our environmental
milieu. Just like you have it, you have kings in Malaysia and you are not going to say if
you are Malasian you are going to condemn it outright because or say it is not
democratic from a western European point of view because it does not allow for casting
for the ballot papers. So that is my view on the statement.
Chairman’s Response
Thank you, Nana. I think the main point is that although it is elective, it is basically
heritable, you got to belong to the appropriate clan or lineage before you even become a
candidate before election.
Nana Asiedu’s Response:
Right that is why am saying not in a western European sense but in our context and even
all the imperial context of India, Japan, China, Malaysia and even Britain, it is
democratic.
Remarks
Actually I have also participated in the things all this times and one thing comes like
Prof. Anyimado said legitimacy and authority. He made that reference to Nana’s position
about the chief may be legitimate but democracy is what exists in the United States
situation. I think what we seem to be battling actually is that we have a situation which
as people we have a situation which we see to belong to us. So in every village try
anything derogatory about the system in the village and you can really be in trouble. Say

14. that about the nation, state, and everybody will agree with you, toast derogatory about the
problems of the nation state and everybody in the country will agree with you that the
nation state is wrong. Those are the things that we need to start confronting as a people.
How are we going to make the nation state which was created for us, how are we going to
make ourselves belong to it and make it belong to us. I think that is an issue we need to
confront frontally otherwise all these that we are talking whether one thing is called
democracy and another thing is called legitimate or whatever, we could keep talking
about it on and on again and will not arrive at anything because we keep having the same
problem. I think that is the point I want to make.
Chairman’s Comment
Thank you very much. I think when you look at the history of Ghana after independence,
whatever one thinks about military regimes and all the rest what they share with the
elected regimes is that all of them have tried to make a nation out of the people brought
together into a state. I do not think we have actually reached a state where we can call
ourselves a nation but am sure we have gone a long way from 1957 even though people
show bickery about the position being allocated on ethnic basis and that kind of thing, by
and large I thing Ghanaians have come a long way in thinking of themselves as a nation
rather than a disparage group of people and I made the point that all our regimes from
1957 had contributed to this and I think we stand every good chance of becoming a real
nation in the future. As a historian, I think in terms of decades and centuries and
millennia so am quite very hopeful that we will get there. Thank you.
My sister here made a very interesting suggestions for example, what are colleagues in
the francophone have been doing that is the proportional representation in which case
nobody is frustrated because even if you score only 10% of the total votes you are
entitled to only 10% seats in parliament and therefore, everybody feels committed to the
system. May be it is about time we start thinking seriously in terms of making sure that
everybody is committed to the system because the winner takes all system that we have
been operating alleviate some people or some section of the society and therefore, they
do not feel committed to the system. If you are thinking in terms of making every body

15. comes on board, everybody feels committed to Ghana in cooperated then may be these
are some of the issues we would want to think about seriously. So I will like to invite
interventions or queries on this particular dimension of the discussion.
Ali Yaba Yakubu (KNUST) Question
Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the two presenters for their
unprepared but very educative presentations. I have two questions but before I ask them,
having followed the presentations from the morning up to this time I have made a
personal observation that it is really a huge challenge and pride to be a historian among
intellectuals because you are embodiments of all the disciplines. You can never say you
do not know this because it is not your field.
My first question is to Dr. Anyimadu. He made mention of the fact that Ghana is not
wholly democratic or autocratic. I want him to explicitly explain why Ghana is not fully
democratic. At least, I know from a layman’s point of view why we are not autocratic.
My second question is to Nana. Nana, I want to please find out why and how chieftaincy
can be practically brought on board to co-exist with modern system of governance to
ensure, enhance democracy. How should it be brought on board? Thank you.
Dr. Anyimadu’s Response
Well, Ghana is obviously not fully democratic, there is a whole industry by the
International Aid establishment to grade various countries in terms of how democratic
they are even the world Bank is gotten to that kind of game and they are all sorts of
league table and as far as we do not get 10% it means we are not fully democratic. But
more seriously, I was given examples. I made a presentation at Solace’s Institute, i.e.
IDEG over a month ago. Just take the issue of local government, there is not local
government in this country. Seriously speaking, there is no local government in this

16. country. You can talk about local government with the bid L and the big G but that does
not necessarily mean you have the real thing. I have been doing a lot of research in
Moree village in the Abora Asedunkwa Mankesim district and if you look at the
governance of Moree for instance, the local state is very, very weak. What we have as a
local government in the first place there is not enough government in it. I was not
surprised in this whole cocaine business because if you have been doing some research in
the fishing communities in the Central Region and all these fishing villages have become
international sea port because there is a business called SYCO and in SYCO, infact if you
go to some of the villages now, they do not really fish at all.
In few of these villages around Cape Coast now, their full time occupation is simply to
stream their canoes to these Korean boats normally fishing trawlers and just buy from and
if you are in the village you see that is not only fish that get into the village. All sorts of
things get in and the government has actually no control. When they had the National
Farmers Day up in the North at Tamale a year ago, both in Elmina and in Moree there
was civil war because the second best National Fisherman was actually chosen from
Moree and the best fisherman who was chosen in Elmina. In both cases the fishing
communities in the ground absolutely disown the selected men because the state simply
did not have the capacity to reach down…………….that point in time the regional
fisheries office in Cape Coast was actually squatting under a tree because over a year
there has been a legal case and the regional office of Agriculture has been locked up. So
that is what I mean there is not enough governance, if you have enough governance the
issue of whether the government is democratic or not does not come in.

17. Nana Akuoko Sarpong’s Response
I did mention that if you look at the 1992 Constitution, a large room was created for the
chieftaincy institution, but apart from just being expressed in the constitution as partners
in governance, it does not really mean anything in terms of practical, it is not part of the
practical processes of governance in the nation. The 1992 Constitution for instance says
the institution of chieftaincy is guaranteed but that is all that it means. The National
House of Chiefs should have representations on the Council of State, the Council of State
is an amorphous body, it really cannot exercise any power. It is just an advisory, their
advice is not open to the public so that in itself is a weightless so nobody knows
its…………. It is not possible to know exactly what kind of advice that they provided
both to the executive and parliament. So that is also a big between. The argument for
instance that raises this afternoon about the powers of parliament that parliament cannot
initiate legislation simply because it has no authority to initiate any policy that will be a
charge on the consolidate fund so the executives that dictates the pace. That is not
different from, for instance having the National House of Chiefs. When you hear the
name National House of Chiefs, I have been a member for twenty years, it does not really
make any sense at all. If you cannot provide any advice to anybody you cannot even call
a minister to come to speak to the National House of Chiefs. So it is just there, when you
hear the name the President of the National House of Chiefs which runs almost parallel
systems of government but one is just an expression of intent, it does not really make the
National House of Chiefs, it has no power in any form to influence a government policy
and the regional House of Chiefs is just about the same from which we select about five

18. from each of the Regional House of Chiefs to serve on the National House of Chiefs. So
all these institutions which have been created but it is the executive that calls the team
even if you go to the extent of relating it to what parliament can do and cannot do, that
shows that it is the executive that runs it but as a practical issue if you happens to be
fallen into that area of category called the traditional rulers, there was the district chief,
for instance, relates to either a paramount chief or any other person, you will see that you
are only there as a glorify institution. So there is no power, if it has to take any form than
it might be recognized as a true partner and a true partnership must be true partnership
that you must provide the wealth with all, you must provide the resources. After all the
traditional councils have a registrar but beyond paying the registrar. They do not even
provide ordinary paper for them to run the affairs of the traditional councils. So the
traditional council is supposed to be a government institution but they do not provide
anything other than paying the registrar. How that traditional council should be run, the
district secretary has no interest whatsoever so the district secretaries who are running the
show on behalf of the executive. So the point that I am making is which ever form it
takes it may even go to the extent of going to the Tanzania way and say that we are
abolishing the institution, that we know but that is the point I am making that unless we
make accommodation for this in one form of the other, the democracy that we are seeking
to choose, becomes the most powerful institution is on the ground which has no part to
play in the governance of the nation, that is the reality. So I am only throwing out a
challenge that the nation has to come to terms with that, unless we come to terms with
that and again the other weakness you made reference to, Norway and the others. The
resource base of a nation determines the real practice of democracy because the rising

19. expectation which the nation is not able to satisfy undermines the authority of
government and the nation because we are raising the hope of the people which are not
forth coming and then it creates cynicism among the people and then am telling you that
the majority of the people in this nation are disenchanted about the political process that
we are using to run the country, am telling you this, that is a fact on the ground. So we
must not be assuming that simply because we have institutions of democracy, we are
practicing democracy as you said.
Nana Kobina Nketia’s Intervention
It seems that chiefs are becoming an advocacy group and when each person speaks they
speak for themselves but I was reacting to some of the things the gentleman said and
looking at what Prof. is also saying, Ghana has often been said to be often in transition,
one of the questions I personally ask is transition from what to what? When you are
transiting you should know that you are moving from A to B. If am going to Geneva and
am transiting in London, I know that this is where I am and am going and I hear this
statements made more than enough I mean quite often but the destination here is not
talked about. When the young man here was speaking and he was talking about the
modern state, what does he mean by the modern state, he did not define it, he just said it
but I can see that in a way we are interrogating power, how does it come, the idea of
convening. Yesterday for example, I was called and told that after the Moslems have
gone to the park, they were moved to where I lived. Now, I was making fun: if I were
there I have to use my Cape Coast farmers’ money, i.e. Cape Coast University pay to look
after this people because they come and customary is convention and this is part of the

20. thing. Now, when Nana was speaking we were also interrogating the basis of chieftaincy.
Yesterday at another meeting that I was, I said the chief is non-person, now what is that
meant? And this is things that we have left and we have not interrogated and without
interrogating our own basis of existence our own culture, we might not be able to arrive
at the usefulness or how we are going to use it in our daily governance. The Akan for
example, call the past Yεn Nananom, they call the future Yεn Nananom so that the
ancestors are the future and if do not go into the philosophical basis of something like
that how can the ancestors also be the future? You will also be there in the presence and
not know also have a crisis of vision about what to do and where to go. Most of you
sitting here are lawyers. You have to talk law for your living but what has the law got to
do me, it is not mat, it is not harmony. Your law is British Jurisprudence, British
customary law base on how Roman law which enshrined slavery and it has been
something that desecrates my existence. Something that desecrates my existence is what
I hake now from what he is saying how is a modern say. So these are all questions part of
the asking questions and the most important that I could see from this morning and this
evening is the fact that we are now dialoguing with the constitution and who we are and
basically, hopefully we will arrive at a fruitful thing that will make us a nation as we want
to be. Thank you, professor.
Chairman’s Response
Thank you Nana. I think Nana has summed up what we have been doing both now and
yesterday. We have been interrogating Ghana’s part at least from 1957. One thing I tell
my students is that you should ask the correct questions. Whether or not you get the

21. proper answer does not really matter. What is more important was conceiving the
possible questions to pose we have been interrogating the past, trying to find out how far
we have gone from 1957 how successfully we have charted our course from
independence.
There is not a consensus of how far we have gone in terms of achieving the aspirations of
the founding fathers. I do not have any hesitations at all in stating that we are on the right
path. May be some of us rather impatient and I want to remind people like that that it
was Nkrumah’s impatience that led to most of his problems. You got to be prepared to
seek things in our stride, we are dealing with human institutions, some of which have
developed overtime. Even if we find reasons to be dissatisfy with them, we cannot throw
them overboard overnight. We have to accommodate ourselves to the institutions just as
much as we want to accommodate institutions to our convenience and I think what we
have been doing over the past couple of days have indicated that even if we did not
succeed completely, we have come a long way and I think we should all feel encouraged
that we are on the right path and that we will get there. I do not believe that the period of
transition that my young brother talked about will span decades. I think very soon we
would decide what exactly you want to create in Ghana. Whether we want to have a
constitution and structures that actually speak back to your heritage or whether we want
to bring on board other peoples heritage graft it on to our structure which of course will
not lead us anywhere. So being the same people that we are in Ghana, am sure we will
know what to do to ensure that whatever structures that we bring on board have roots and
a very deep root at that in our history, in our heritage in our culture.

22. On this note I will like to bring this two-day functions to an end, we are very gratified
that there are more historians here; I mean there are more non-historians than historians
because we believe that we want to tap into your wealth of knowledge for us to
previously document what has happened and what has been happening. As you know the
idea is that the proceedings of the workshops are going to be written up and we actually
find your inputs and your contributions invaluable. Thank you very much.
Prof. Odotei’s Comment:
Thank you very much and I hope you have enjoyed yourselves as much as I have and the
historians here. For us this is a feast as we said when we launched it yesterday,
information is hidden in the head of a whole lots of people, there are libraries and
archives walking and when we get the right people they just give us history, it means the
research method we are using now is to find out people who have participated in the
history of this country. Those who have observed the history of the country so that we
will be able to preserve and map out for the future……….young lawyers and they have
convinced me that I would not be able to get lawyers to come and sit down with me for
two days. They told me it was impossible so I was impressed when they traveled all the
way from Tamale, Kumasi, Sunyani, Takoradi, they came early the day before and when
they saw even that the accommodation, the hotel was not ready for them, they went out,
booked accommodation paid for accommodation and came here and they have been with
us for two whole days. That is speak of the future of this country. We have hope that all
the questions that we have asked and the discussions we will like to received a paper

23. from you with a bias on your region generally from you but if you have a little bias for
example, we will like to know how lawyers have been performing in Volta Region or
what contribution have been made and what you think became……..in Takoradi, in Ho
and all that. Is there a division between the rural and the urban or between the regions
and the capital? These are issues and if so how have they been over the years, the
continuity and discontinuities. Elections for example, how have they been in your
regions in particular? For example they tell us that chiefs should not be involved in
partisan politics, we are in Accra and we know chieftaincy in Accra but we know that in
the other areas, chieftaincy is quite a strong institution. Are they really living by
constitution on the ground or are they not and if they are not how come they can get away
with it. What percentages are not, we want to hear these things and you can cite
examples to tell us that and then we have to find the chiefs and find the secrets, how they
are able to flout the constitution and still retain the stools. So they will tell us the secrets
how they have been because you know chieftaincy is going through quite a bit and they
are agents of development, the chiefs are re-writing their own terms of reference
everyday. If you have somebody like Nana Akuoko Sarpong, a seasoned lawyer who is
also a chief, he knows how to obey the constitution without obeying the constitution
because he will tell a l the lays of this country and you…… so we want to know more
deep, we want to go deeper so please send us a little write-up that will enrich the book we
are going to write. We hope to be able to launch it next year. We started with the rule of
law and if comes to Ghana’s Independence we can show a book that the rule of law in
Ghana since Independence that will be a good birthday present that we can give to this
nation. So we are all working together, if you have some bio-data of judges who have

24. been in your regions, those who have made an impacts, landmarks cases in your region
which we do not know about, landmark cases which have walked through to the supreme
court and the outcome, how they impacted and the rule of laws in this country, we will be
most grateful. So the Historical Society will be expecting something from you and those
who could not come from the other regions, your colleagues, please tell them that they
have missed the great feast that we have had here and ask them to bring something.
On this note we will like to also thank our Nanas who have been with us. They have
really demonstrated that they are good fighters, we are proud of you. We will meet you
again, two weeks exactly from today. We will meet again, this time we are going to
discuss culture, the Arts and National Identity and we will invite other people who have
participated, who also have voice in that. So you will hear from us, if you cannot come
but you join on the internet, we have given you the internet address so you will join us
and make your contributions and ask questions on the internet. So on this note we say
thank you for Aye Botcher, Prof. Amenumey and what can I say without thanking our
political scientist, they cannot run away from us, they have done a wonderful job, Amos
and Solace at very short notice, indeed they are worthy ambassadors. Political Science is
history turn up side down but today I have charged my definition and opinion on them
because if they had not come to rescue us I do not know what we would have done so
apology for teasing you all the time. And now Per who has come all the way from
Norway, I hope you have enjoyed your self as much. That is our Norwegian Coordinator
of the NUFU Project. Infact they have been given us breast milk because it is the NUFU
that was used to revive the Historical Society to it has a good name NUFU – Breast. The

25. NUFU Project and we will like to thank our media for coming and our teachers from far
coming. I hope you have learnt enough so you make history more vibrant to our students
so we attract the bright students and to our chairman Professor Amenumey and I want to
say a big thank you and may God bless us all.