Otumfuo Osei Tutu II celebrates three years on the Golden Stool, this year. He was enstooled king of all Asante on April 26, l999. He is also king of the Kumasi territorial boundaries within the Asante cultural order.

His position is quite unique as Asante appropriately appropriates all that is dignified in power and wealth and riches, which all earlier Akan kingdoms in the past spotted. Asante as a nation even in the modern sense accordingly is the epitome of the glorious past that ever belonged to all the Akan peoples.

Osei Tutu is also king virtually of four Honorary Doctorate Degrees which four great institutions of learning both at home and abroad have conferred on him for his meritorious service to the cause of education in Asante. He quickly as a result symbolises the turning of the Asante war?rior sword into Asante warrior pen, which our king has vigorously been promoting for three years now.

ASANTE STRUGGLES

For him Asante should go to school and remain in school and graduate from school into the areas of industry and commerce, social progress and humane politics. The earlier militant spirit in wars of old should belong to the past, which served, and well the cause of Asante struggles to live in peace and harmony with her neighbours. The prosecution of education by the Asante King makes him a fond king of his people, and his close and distant neighbours.

Asante should go to school was the secret war cry of the British since the two forces met as sellers and buyers of one another's goods, in the days of yore. But Asante did resist all attempts for reasons of fear that their power and empire acquired in the field of war would be lost at the hands of those unique "white-kinned men from the horizon...."

It was allegedly the prophesy of Okomfo Anokye the then seer and high priest of Asante, and duly confirmed by Okomfo Tuuda of Adansi Bonsam in Patakro near Adansi Akrokyere. Asante took the warning of the 'prophesy' seriously and had all along sought to avoid the white-skinned Akwasi Broni.

And so Asante wouldn't wish to enter into any hostilities with Akwasi Broni. They regarded him formally as a friend and not as an enemy. In their wisdom, friends help one another, enemies destroy one another. And if Akwasi Broni was a friend to have, he could help Asante revert the substance of the prophesy and not become the agent of it. Asante power and empire should endure for her sake, and for the sake of all other Akan empires that had ever existed in Bono Manso, Adansi Akrohyere, Abankeseso and Akwamu that had ever existed in Bono Manso, Adansi Akrokyere, Abankeseso and Akwamu.

But Asante could not maintain total friendship with Akwasi Broni. In four great wars with the British in 1821, 1824, 1874 and 1900 Asante lost all to Akwasi Broni, first by the Treaty of 1831, and 1874 at Fomena. Asante could not avoid to fall off her military train. One victory in four wars was not enough to save Asante from falling victim to the superior arms and war tactics of the British.

But the factor of Akwasi Broni's victory was not superior arms per se, but his education advancement, which Asante lacked but which Asante had to embrace in the hard way, and successfully, in the long run.

And Otumfuo Osei Tutu manifests all to complete Asante School Culture and push it further formally by the setting up of the Asante Education Endowment Fund. The flame of education is already here. Akwasi Broni has been a friend indeed, as Asante saw him, and so regarded him. His becoming an enemy was only a means to 'renew' Asante-Akwasi Broni friendly "relations".

Akwasi Broni did not treat the Asante King Prempeh I as an enemy when he swept him off his kingdom in about 1896 and had him exiled to the Seychelles through the Elmina Castle and Free Town in Sierra Leone. He taught the king in the English literary traditions, and made him a virtual scholar, and a baptised Christian. The exile was a school in disguise.

ERA OF EDUCATION

The dawn of a new era of school education had already dawned in Asante, which Otumfuo Osei Tutu now expouses in the award of four Honorary Doctorate Degrees he has had heaped on him. He accepts them for himself and for all Asante by which Asante now should conquer to better prosecute the cause of peace, and freedom, and social progress. Asante education is meaningful in that respect....

And when the photo exhibition opens about now in part celebration of Otumfuo's three years on the Golden Stool, we would assuredly see in pictures the conferment of the quadru?ple degrees on the Asante King. They should appropriately mark the limitless extent Asante Education endeavour should reach. If the appropriate 'prophet' of Asante greatness marked the great size of Kumasi to come by the sword he planted at the out?skirts of Bantama in Kumasi, the current prophet of Asante education endeavour should be marking Asante education limits in multiples of four Honorary Doctorate Degrees in three years.

It is no doubt a great symbol of great things to come to Asante in Akanland, and Asante with his other distant neighbours. The credit is still Akwasi Broni's. He first "smuggled John Owusu Ansah and Nyantakyi, Princes of the Golden Stool to Britain to study in British schools in the days of yore. John Owusu Aneab's two sons -Albert and John - followed the footsteps of their father to have British education. But the literary fire set aflame did not reach anywhere beyond Kumasi.

They remain, however, the first seeds of education Akwasi Broni dared to sow in Asante which now bears fruits in four folds of Honorary Doctorate Degrees for the Asante King, and an Education Endowment Fund to boost. Asante was still poor then. There was no Asante scholar of note to accompany our king into exile but one Fante scholar named James Korsah became his teacher and became his linguist and interpreter with Akwasi Broni.

He needs to be remembered whenever Asante comes to celebrate her literary victories as manifested in the literary awards to Otumfuo Osei Tutu. There is also the other Fante scholar, Evangelist and Consul to honour - one John Hayford who earlier in about 1858 was permitted by the then Asante King to preach the Gospel within the precincts of the King's palace. It was one feat the famous captive missionary Ramseyer could not have in the time of Nana Kofi Karikari. Rather Ramseyer became one of the conditions for peace to make between Asante and the British in 1874.

FLUENT TONGUE

We are saying formal education reached Asante in the hard way. Asante resistance to it could not stand Akwasi Broni's persistence. And when the barrier was finally broken, Asante suc?cumbed to the forces of formal education only to turn to claim the victory of it all.

We are witnesses of it all today. We have the Knighthood of Otumfuo Osei Agyeman Prempeh II to boast of, and earlier on the coat and tie and the fluent tongue with the English language of King Prempeh I. Now we are counting on in this discussion the four Doctorate Degrees of Otumfuo Osei Tutu II. Asante chiefs are no longer illiterates. Akwasi Broni should hold his peace now. We have more enlightened chiefs who enrich the Asante chieftaincy institution with the light of formal education.

There is, for example, the lawyer chief of Agogo, the Accountant chief of Essumeja, the Civil Engineer chief of Old Juaben and the College Tutor chief of Kokofu. Mampong also gives us an administrator chief with Asokore chief topping it up with the Doctor of letters in Law.

The light of formal education should burn in Asante which the Asante King now stokes to burn brighter still. He himself is an Accountant by training and a great visionary who carries the chalk and the pen to entrench Asante scholarship in the social system, now and for years to come.

Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, congratulations on the attainment of three years on the Golden Stool to which you add rare 'regalia' of four academic hoods, and four gowns and four caps to match. Well done, our Asante King and Asante King of Letters.