Francis Agboada (Togbui Sri III) Floors His Enemies

Well-meaning Ghanaians – both at home and abroad – could not have received a better windfall this new, Leap Year than the announcement of Mr. Francis Nyonyo Agboada, otherwise known as Togbui Sri III that, after conducting a solemn and careful soul-searching, the former regent – or Awoamefia – of the Anlo paramount stool has voluntarily decided to abdicate his stool as the Fiaga, or paramount chief, of the Anlo state (Ghanaweb.com 1/14/08).

Indeed, the government-owned newspaper, the Daily Graphic, which first reported Mr. Agboada’s decision, stated that the latter “has finally renounced his claim to the Anlo stool.”

At this juncture, it is significant to observe that what really matters is not whether Mr. Agboada had a legitimate claim to the Anlo stool or not, but the astute and mature recognition of Togbui Sri III that the peaceful productivity of Anlo society and, by logical extension, Ghanaian society at large, is far more significant than sheer political symbolism, however prestigious or honorable the latter’s assumption might be deemed. For, ultimately, the institutional legitimacy of chieftaincy inheres primarily in the latter’s capacity to provide stability and security for the unfettered, collective development of the people. And it appears to be Mr. Agboada’s epiphanic appreciation of the foregoing fact that healthily informed his quite laudable decision to abdicate the Anlo paramount stool. Whether one puts cynical quotation marks around the verbally auspicious gesture of “Abdication,” as the Daily Graphic reporter, or more likely the editor, did is beside the point. And to be certain, such a loaded editorial jab is patently unprofessional; for it flagrantly undermines the dispassionate objectivity that is the cardinal principle of news reportage.
What is significant at this juncture is for the Kufuor Administration to pick up on the challenge of Mr. Agboada by setting up a high-powered panel of investigators to enquire into the infamous hostilities of November 1, 2007, that resulted in the wholly unnecessary deaths of five people, among the latter a policeman dispatched on a peacekeeping mission.
Of course, the findings of such commission must be treated with utmost gravity. And while we fain would, of course, have any clearly identified culprits promptly brought to book, punitively speaking, nonetheless, we pray that the Government would rather invest more resources into troubleshooting any such likely outbreak of fatal hostilities in the near future. Of course, we also recognize the glaring reality of the fact of the inevitable unpredictability of some of these chieftaincy-oriented hostilities. As to what initially motivated Mr. Francis Nyonyo Agboada to stubbornly cling onto his ambition of becoming Togbui Sri III is not quite clear, particularly now that the abdicator also claims, rather curiously, albeit quite plausibly, that he had never needed any material support from the Anlo stool in order to establish himself as the quite successful businessman – or entrepreneur – that he is today.
What is even more heartening is Mr. Agboada’s assertion that abdicating the Anlo paramount stool would enable the abdicator to be of even far better service to the Anlo people, in particular, and Ghanaians, in general. We only wish that Mr. Agboada had come to this conclusion prior to rather unwisely involving himself in the bloody and outright barbarous events of November 1, 2007.
The obvious reaction, of course, would be for his legion critics to invoke the age-old gallant, or romantic, tradition, and/or theory of “The Chase,” which would be that Mr. Agboada appears to have had a quite obsessive love affair with the all-too-human ambition of becoming the proverbial Big Cheese of Anloland. His ambition, according to “The Chase” theory, was quite appealing – if not outright ravishing – until the Knight Errant succeeded in conquering his Dainty Catch, his Dream Princess, only to anticlimactically realize, in the now-clichéd language of the celebrated Bard-of-Avon (or was it Mr. John Keats?) that, after all, “All that glitters is no gold at all,” but a sheer figment of the sophomorically flighty imagination.
In any case, however wistful he may be now or is wont to become in the near future, at least Mr. Francis Nyonyo Agboada could quite legitimately – no pun intended, whatsoever, of course – pride himself in the historic fact of having once been the Biggest Cheese of all Anloland, at least for the proverbial fifteen minutes.
For my part, it may be of interest to observe, if only in passing, that while growing up in the 1960s, in Fourth Grade, to be exact, I had learned in Civics class (one of Prime Minister Busia’s sterling contributions to Ghanaian education) at the University of Ghana’s Staff-Village Primary School, from Mr. F. K. Buah’s History of Modern Ghana that a Togbui Sri had, indeed, reigned in Anloland for some sixty (60) whopping years; and once upon his death, the afore-referenced Togbui Sri had been proudly described as the longest-reigning Ghanaian traditional ruler.
Maybe when the traditional history of Anloland of the first-half of the Twenty-First Century gets to be written, Mr. Francis Nyonyo Agboada would mercifully be accorded the deserved honor of having been Togbui Sri III, one who responsibly abdicated his legitimately claimed stool for the sake of the peace and progress of his people.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.