The Okyenhene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, needs to steer completely clear of the controversy swirling around the “Agyapadeε” Document because just as many of us are strongly inclined to suspect and believe in the palpable and the concrete existence of an “Asante Project,” as widely alleged by the late President John Evans “Adzepa Dze Owo’fiea Oye” Atta-Mills, late, and then Vice-President John “Ouagadougou-Nkonfem Flying” Dramani Mahama, absolutely no one can be fooled about The Okyenhene’s vehement denial of the existence of an “Akyem Project.”

More so, when concrete and scandalous forensically credible evidence exists vis-à-vis the national and the global contretemps that was the Kenneth Ofori-Atta and the Gabriel “Gabby” Otchere-Darko hatched and authored “Agyapa Heritage Investment” Mega-Heist.

More so, as well, when the most prominent face of Akyem-Abuakwa and Okyeman in the national political arena, to wit, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, kept foolhardily and adamantly and impudently pushing for the curious implementation of the same, even after the President’s own appointed Independent Special Prosecutor had boldly and, later, publicly informed the entire nation about the kleptocratic and the “state-capturing” nature of the Ofori-Atta and Company-authored “Agyapa Heritage Investment” Mega-Scam, for which the recently, reluctantly, fired Finance Minister – actually, Mr. Ofori-Atta was given the even much higher portfolio of International Finance-Sourcing Minister – publicly admitted to having created a shell company in the Post-Mandela Republic of South Africa (RSA), to surreptitiously siphon a humongous portion of the returns accruing them from in the long-term and treasonously at the expense of Ghanaian citizens and taxpayers.

As the globally immortalized African-Jamaican Rastafarian Prophet and Reggae Legend, Mr. Robert Nesta Marley – aka Bob Marley – says in one of his songs: “There is absolutely no smoke without the certain and the concrete existence of fire.”

In short, there definitely must be in existence some concrete and palpable form of what is being gleefully albeit disturbingly paraded around by the various local media houses in the country as the “Agyapadeε” Document; what is not clear is the morally and legally damnable and unarguably scandalous extent to which the contents of the latter Document are being or have been or can be forensically ascertained or attested to have been implemented to the letter (See “Disregard “Agyapadie” document, aims to fan hatred between Okyeman and Asanteman – Okyenhene” Modernghana.com 7/28/24).

Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, is also being lily-livered or pusillanimous and rather morbidly disingenuous when he alleges that the “Eastern Region had more representation in former President Kufuor’s cabinet than in Akufo-Addo’s [cabinet], suggesting that the controversy [over the Agyapadeε Document] is aimed at stirring up animosity towards the Akyem people.” The latter quote is actually not directly from the proverbial horse’s own mouth; rather, it contains the interpretation of the words of The Okyenhene by the anonymous Citinewsroom.com reporter.

Now, I find the preceding spin to be rather strange and downright disingenuous because that is not what most Ghanaians are saying on the streets in the villages, towns and cities across the country. Definitely not on the streets of the Greater Accra Metropolis or the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area. So, it is quite obvious that Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, has been living in a world and, perhaps, a bubble of his own for quite a considerable while now.

You see, Dear Reader, in the wake of the abrupt and the very rude expulsion of Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, at the time the Agyekum-Kufuor-appointed Sports Minister, I had a pretty lengthy and emotionally fraught telephone conversation with The Okyenhene, who also happens to be my paternal cousin, in which the Akyem-Abuakwa Chieftain expressed bitter disappointment in the then lame-duck President Agyekum-Kufuor, including the fact of the Manhyia and the Asante-Atwima-Nwabiagya native having caused a nondescript statue to be constructed in the memory of the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics, Dr. Joseph (Nana Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah in Kyebi, a monument that The Okyenhene found to be more insulting to the memory of the revered Architect of Modern Ghana and the moral sensibilities of the people of Okyeman in general, being that President Agyekum-Kufuor had not undertaken any worthwhile development projects in either the Kyebi Municipality or Okyeman in general.

Now, regarding the expulsion of Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, The Okyenhene clearly envisaged this move to be unforgivably tantamount to the deliberate and the selective and the surgically “genocidal” process of the radical “De-Akyemnization” of the Agyekum-Kufuor cabinet. Indeed, during the course of our conversation, Cousin Nana Kwame Amaniampong, that is the given birth and the private-life name of Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panyin, II, bitterly decried the fact that President Agyekum-Kufuor would also abruptly and rudely cause the removal of two of the only three Akyem-descended major cabinet appointees in his government.

He would further add that the recent equally and summary removal of Mr. Felix Owusu-Agyepong, from the Principality or the Paramountcy of Akyem-Swedru, meant, in effect, that a whopping 70 per cent of the most influential Akyem-descended Agyekum-Kufuor cabinet appointees had been surgically and strategically purged, Orwellian fashion, from the Asante-dominated New Patriotic Party-sponsored government of Uncle Kofi Diawuo – the unofficial name of the Oxbridge-educated President Agyekum-Kufuor.

Mind the Dear Reader, The Okyenhene did not personally call the extant President by his “Apenteba Din” (Ritually Inoculative Changeling’s Name), but he surely at least semiotically meant every nuance of the “Diawuo” part of the name. “Now, with both Messrs. Felix Owusu-Agyepong and Yaw Osafo-Maafo expelled from the Kufuor cabinet, only ‘Nana’ remains as the one significant ministerial appointee in the Kufuor cabinet.”

Which is fundamentally why this jazzy and patently disingenuous, if not downright diffident, talk about former President Agyekum-Kufuor’s having had relatively more “Eastern Region Residents in executive positions in his government than his own uncle and current President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, could not wrenchingly disgust Yours Truly all the more.

There are more real, true and serious grievances here that cannot be cavalierly swept under the metaphorical rug, largely about the widely perceived pathological Asante Ethnic Supremacy among the rank-and-file membership of the Ofori-Panyin Clan and, to be certain, many a Non-Asante Akan-Descended Ghanaian Citizen that needs to be boldly and practically confronted before the entire country gets irreversibly plunged into a Rwandan type of civil strife, from which any talk of recovery would not be very easy.

The position of “Strategic Resistance” taken by the “Agyapadeε Warriors” may not necessarily be reflective of the sentiments of the entire Okyeman State or the Three-Akyem States (Akyem-Mansa), but these grievances need to be boldly and urgently foregrounded in any genuine discourse on Ghana’s healthy and organic or corporate and unified development before matters get way out of hand, and instead of this pernicious pretense to the total lack of any politically rebellious undertow that would make the so-called Homeland Study Group Rebellion seem like crackling popcorn in the lobby of a movie theatre.

During the course of my 60 years-plus existence as a bona fide Ghanaian citizen and one who has always been fervently hopeful of our collective national development, we have had an “Nzema Project,” a “Bono Project,” a “Sissala Project,” an “Anlo-Ewe Project,” the longest of its kind in postcolonial Ghanaian history; a “Fante Project” and a “Gonja Project,” so why not an “Akyem Project”? And God-Allah being Merciful, we shall soon also be inaugurating a “Mamprusi/Mamprugu Project.”

Now, what Truly Yours is humbly and solemnly demanding here is “The Ghana Project,” one to which we can all hitch our hopes and aspirations and comfortably and unreservedly identify with. Now, is this very simple and humble and all-too-salutary demand too much to ask or demand?