Full Text: Togbe Afede’s speech before National House of Chiefs election

GENERAL MEETING OF THE NATIONAL HOUSE OF CHIEFS (NHC) ELECTION DAY, 2020: ADDRESS BY TOGBE AFEDE XIV November 12, 2020

Nananom, Your Majesties, officials of the Electoral Commission, our friends from the Press, Distinguished Invited Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a great pleasure and honour for me to welcome you all warmly to this very important General Meeting.

Daasebre Kwebu Ewusi and I would like to thank you for your support, and for the dedication to your various roles at the committee level over the past four years, that helped us to strengthen the unity of the House and made our voice heard on national affairs.

We want to thank members of the previous House who have not returned. We have lost the likes of Nana Alloh, Agonahene, Sakote Naba, and others who had served this House very well.

But we are delighted that we have equally capable replacements in our expanded House. Among others, we have two medical doctors from Ahafo and Ashanti Regions, and a High Court Judge from Bono Region. I extend a special welcome to all our new members.

This meeting is a very important one because we shall be electing the new leadership of the House. So this is not an ordinary meeting, but a very historic one, that will define the destiny of the House and of traditional leadership in our country.

We are truly happy to see all of us here today. It is like the fulfilment of the sacred promise we made on our assumption of office almost four years ago, when Nana Kwebu Ewusi and I promised to serve the best interests of our people and our country.

When we took over the leadership of this House in November 2016, the total membership was fifty (50). A lot of work at the NHC saw the passage of LI 2409 in August this year, and the expansion of the membership of the regional houses, and the creation of six new regional houses, giving us an expanded membership of eighty (80).

Today, thanks to God, the Almighty, and the spirits of our ancestors, we will all have the privilege of either renewing the mandate of the leadership of the House, or electing a new leadership to lead us over the next four years. Our votes will go a long way to shape the destiny of chieftaincy in Ghana.

Nananom, our ancestors, our forebears, fought for the stools and skins that are our pride today. We have inherited not only their privileges, but their obligations too. We now have a unique opportunity to:

• Preserve and contribute to the development of our heritage, that is, chieftaincy, in the motherland

• Bring honour, reverence and dignity to chieftaincy

• Protect the independence of chieftaincy, particularly from political interference

• Earn the trust of the people of this country, and
• Honour our stools and our ancestors, and the oaths we have sworn to them.

It requires, among others, that, we do not:

• Allow outsiders to influence the choices we make

• Sell our birthright, our right to make free choices, or
• Betray chieftaincy, and sell the noble institution to those who would destroy it.

If we do, we will be turning ourselves into a bandage that is discarded after the wound is healed. Let us remember that the chieftaincy institution is our heritage, a national asset, whose sanctity we all have a responsibility to protect.

Nananom, the mainstream media and social media are awash with unprecedented allegations of external forces trying to influence some members of this House with money to determine the outcome of the election of its leadership.

I decided not to respond to the numerous media houses calling to verify the truth or otherwise in these allegations. This conscious refusal to speak to the media on the matter is based on my avowed commitment to protecting the image of this House. The National House of Chiefs must not be a house of jokers, where people can sit outside and interfere in its activities by throwing money around.

We are an assemblage of great and noble men of custom and tradition, bonded in this noble apex House as custodians of our time-tested culture and tradition.
The stools and skins that we sit on are our ancestral heritage.

While some of our ancestors paid the ultimate price to protect them, others suffered untold hardships in defending their great kingdoms. Today, we are guardians of this ancestral heritage, guided by the gods in every step we take. This is what makes us unique and important bearers of moral uprightness.

Nananom, let us be reminded today that money was not part of the qualifying requirements for membership of this august House, and money certainly should not be the influencing consideration for electing its leadership. Let us resist the temptation.

Let us avoid the trap set by enemies of chieftaincy, and use this opportunity to reassert our strength and influence as pinnacles of integrity, so that when we speak about corruption, Ghanaians will not tell us to purge ourselves before pontificating.

Nananom, the country needs a strong chieftaincy institution to serve as bulwark against the divisive, winner-takes-all kind of politics that has been our lot since Ghana’s return to democratic politics.

Nananom, we have an obligation to strive to bring prosperity and happiness to our people. Only then can we enhance our image, dignity, nobility and reverence. And only then can we have relevance in today’s world. The task ahead of us is big, no doubt. But much bigger, are the consequences of failure.

THANK YOU, AND GOD BLESS US ALL.