Otumfuo Osei Tutu II and Dormaahene
In the Akan lore, there's a dissembler character by the name Ananwoma.
He is witty, very wise, but in the wrong way, he uses his wisdom. With the exception of his depth of knowledge in all issues that fiendishly help him to manipulate people and cause conflict amongst even friends, Ananwoma lacks noble graces in beauty or manly strength to be enlisted in the army of the king for battles against enemy kingdoms.
Ananwoma stoked fire amongst hitherto inseparable brethren. He was the Bono description of the aphorism: a feather in the fire (Takra wɔ gyam').
He broke homes and caused a husband to hate his sworn loving wife, wives requiting same for revenge, parents poisoning their children, and children burying their parents alive.
Ananwoma does this for sport and will laugh to tearing when his schemes turned lovers into enemies. He cheered at the sight of blood oozing from the wounds of his victims.
With his feeble hands, Ananwoma cannot handle any heavy lethal weapon, so in his waistcoat, he hanged an unsheathed sabre, a small sword he rattles whenever and wherever he heard and saw people exchanging angry words.
Ananwoma with his sabre raised aloft says to either side of the feuding foes, "if you mean your words answer same with your sword, so do the strong."
His incendiary tongue was a rouble-rouser, and when he spits words into hearts they cause angst, and angry words grew into bloody fisticuffs.
Where is Ananwoma today? He's grown into the psyche of the caitiffs we call sabre-rattlers. They're now threatening united Ghana's fledgling democracy. They're toying with the sustainability of our relative tranquil begotten by the Fourth Republic.
Two noble cousins, the Dormaahene and the Asantehene who are indelible in the building process of this Fourth Republic now have amongst their courtiers the Ananwoma characters. They inveigle their war-waging sabre-rattling in the palaces of the Osagyefoɔ Oseadeɛyɔ Agyemang Badu II and the Ɔpemsoɔ Otumfoɔ Osei Tutu II.
These two great Kings have answered with their swords, and in yonder, the ominous omnibus repercussions will be the open wounds of divisiveness amongst the subjects.
Two elephants locking their tusks in the virgin forest of the carefully nursed Republic of Ghana, plaguing the innocent feeble leaves with early demise and extinction.
In the faction of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's boarding school system at the dawn of Ghana's republic, a Bono lad by the name of Agyemang Badu receives tutelage at Kumasi's Prempeh College, and Asante son Osei Tutu now share one classroom with the Bonos at the Dormaa Senior High school.
These schoolmates saw themselves as cousins and equals, lovers and partners. They've forged many unbreakable bonds. Today they're threatened by the schemes of the latter-day Ananwoma.
Can the sabre-rattlers sheath their swords in their scabbards in lieu of counselling the lords of their respective courts to cease inviolable truce in the interest of their bleeding subjects and the perpetuity of our most envied peaceful atmosphere?
When I see tribal bigots rear their ugly heads in a serene peaceful Ghanaian street, I do accost them with the forsworn Rwandan genocide historical facts.
The Hutus who are of the same culture with the Tutsis, speaking not much of distinct language, dressing in same cultural raiment and eating one staple of the cuisine, but only differing in the outward looks of weight gain and the opposite slim-tall looks respectively of the two tribes; their tribal war in 1994 horrified the whole world.
Hutus called Tutsis cockroaches that migrated from Ethiopia. And the former only needed a spark to light up the tinderbox of their enmity in the downing of President Juvenal Hybarimana's plane. (He was a Hutu).
In hundred days, 800,000 people were gruesomely killed in cold blood - they were mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
They had by then intermarried and bred kids together. Those mixed-race children were left in the middle of the feud, and they were left with no other option than to kill or to be killed by their own blood as do the gladiators of old.
When the Hutus slew the Tutsi, they handed their mutilated bodies to the river so it streamed to where they migrated from.
The United Nations' blue helmet peacekeepers with all their armoury couldn't stand the sight of this total annihilation.
It was the gallant Ghanaian soldiers who stood their ground and served as a bulwark buffer zone to the feuding tribes. And history will forever celebrate Ghana as a peacemaker par excellence.
Why have we found ourselves, the peacemaker of old, under the same hovering dark clouds of impending tribal war?
Is Ghana ready for this dastard history not far from our shores in this volatile African continent?
Adwobrɛɛ, Nananom, we can join forces and fight our common enemies in illiteracy, hunger and lagging development in infrastructure vis-a-vis the dreams of the forebears.
Sabre-rattlers, you the Ananwoma of our time, Ghana needs your wisdom for development in unity, not any other option.
May the good heavens continue His blessing on our Homeland Ghana for forever reign of peace, and farther from our shores into the deep sea bound the devilish warmongers.