Nana Kwabena Nketsia V, The Omanhene of the Essikado Traditional Area

Edited transcript

Introduction: He says the discovery of oil and gas in large quantities offshore Ghana has the ability to transform Ghana for the benefit of the indigenous people as long as Ghanaians remain true to their culture and ready to defend it. He is concerned that Ghana may go down the negative path that has befallen other African countries that discovered oil. My guest is a prominent traditional ruler, the Omanhene of the Essikado traditional area, Nana Kobena Nketsia V. He is also a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cape Coast.

David: How does Ghana ensure that the oil find benefits its people as well as the investors who put money into this venture?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: When you get to read more about oil one of the things it does is that it frightens you. In fact when I personally heard that Ghana had discovered, oil more so in the region that I come from, I closed my eyes and prayed it went away but it wouldn’t go. And then it reminded me about a proverb we have that “if you find the santrofi bird in the bush and you let it go then you allow blessings to go but when you choose to take it home, then you are taking home lamentations”. There is another proverb which is quite deep and says that “before the creator created the world, Ananse the great intelligence was seated”.  One of the things our ancestors have taught us is the act of thinking about every situation. So before we get this oil, the most important thing we have to do is to think. Look at what is there, and out of it be able to create what we want to create with the oil. But if we don’t think and we rush into it, it will then use us. Unfortunately most of the areas in West Africa that produce oil have had the oil using them and now they are trying to build structures to stop the way oil has abused their whole system. Go to Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Fernando Po and of course Nigeria; they were all not in control of the oil and if you cannot control any tool that tool will end up controlling you.  That is what culture is about. Development is just the enhancement of a culture so if any development breaks a culture then there is a problem. The word “independence” means relying on indigenous systems but unfortunately, we have not been relying on our indigenous systems; we’ve rather become people who just import. From the various structures of development to our way of life, our law, our philosophies, our school systems, all lived off importation. Ghana therefore is still a colonial economy which basically extracts without replacing what we extract. If you visit Prestea in the Western Region a major thing that will affect your sensibility is the fact that the place is still a shanty town in spite of all the gold that has been dug out of the ground.

David:  Whose job is it to fix this?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: All of us.

David: But who has the primary responsibility?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: Well, let me put it this way; one of the things I praise our first President for is the fact that he was creating a base that was going to make us self dependent.

David: So political leadership at the highest level is key to fixing these problems?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: It is and it is very important. Leadership comes in various categories, unfortunately for us chiefs we seem to be the forgotten bit of the constitution; the constitution talks about almost everything and towards the end it refers to chieftaincy. Yet if you also look at it very carefully, countries that have broken up within West Africa are those that have had their culture damaged. Even though chiefs have been put as a foot note in the constitution, chieftaincy is still the anchor of our culture and holds this country together.

David: You make it sound as though there are no benefits to extractive industry activity?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: Go to Prestia, Tarkwa and Obuasi and see the benefits. What have we been doing all these years?  Compare any of those towns to Johannesburg and you find that the contrast in clear.

David: What accounts for that disparity?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: It’s because we remove and put nothing back. That was the colonial system.

David: But Ghanaians are in charge now; they chose their leaders including the President?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: We are still living with conditionality given to us by foreign banks and we tell ourselves that we are in charge? We are not in charge of anything. We have gone into a begging system. It is a psychological thing and culture is consciousness and until we turn our minds around we will keep on begging. 

David: Do you think that traditional authorities can turn minds around?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: The African has been so miseducated that he’s gone into self rejection and so he tends to look down on his own institutions.  Go to our law courts, they are based on colonial law and then we gain independence and yet we still use those same laws to oppress indigenous people.

David: Do you consider traditional authorities as capable of leading the way in terms of new thinking?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: Not with new thinking but with the regeneration or restoration of the old thinking. The old thinking which you and I know was also studied in school and it’s “I am because you are; we are, therefore I am”.  No Chief can exist without his people; it is all embracing. The word “Nana” refers to the mass of the people and so therefore I am Nana because of my people. The whole idea of development must be that we use the past models, best of the models, in building the future. The future is never there; the past is the concrete model that we have to use in the present.

David: Surely, we must reject some of the past?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: Of course, we’ll reject the past that we should. In my position, I never think about “I” and I know that most chiefs don’t think about themselves. They think about the collective “we”.  My grandmother always used to say that “what are we leaving behind for those coming after us?”  That is the African centered thinking. It is the European centered thinking that is individualistic.  So in this oil venture, one of the major things that we are considering is what we should do to ensure security for the future. The only way you can ensure future security is to make sure that whatever benefits come should be spread into the larger community. Some of us have been getting together with the sole purpose of creating an investment trust.

For example, the GNPC will most probably be part of every investment to do with oil and its ancillary industries. But what about the people?

David: The GNPC is a government institution investing on behalf of the people.

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: One knows that there is government. But there are certain things on the ground the GNPC may not get into, therefore how do you protect that? The whole coast land of SeKondi-Takoradi is like mini Ghana; you will find diverse ethnic groups there. The joy about the city is that everybody living there feels he or she belongs to the city. For example if you get the fantis in SeKondi-Takoradi  employed you’ve taken a job off my hands and worries off my head; the politicians come and go, I stay even if I leave there will be somebody who will always be there. The security of that community needs to be ensured because the people are close to the oil and so the oil also has a strong relationship with them.

David: Is it not dangerous to suggest that the people who are close to the oil resource should have a special benefit when it is a national resource?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: I have not said a special benefit. This is to protect their interest. I am an Ahanta and I have three parts of me which is the trinity of self. I get my “Kra” from God, I get my “sumsum” from my father and I get my “mogya” from my mother; the earth is female and if I let a piece of land go, it’s my blood that is going. Because it is what I live on, it is what sustains me. Land must go only in the interest of the larger entity called Ghana; but what about those who live around the oil; what do they farm on? Land is always held in trust for the future. If the buyer is educated and knows I am ignorant, he can take advantage of that so that I become a beggar on my own soil. That is not right. The whole idea is that there needs to be special protection. If you look at the Niger Delta, there is the federal government but why are they fighting in the Niger Delta? This is because the inhabitants are affected directly by the operations of the oil industries. These people therefore must be protected one way or the other.

David: Do you think we are on the right track with oil and gas or are there things that you think we should be re-thinking?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: We are planning at the local level on how to safeguard things so that in case we are invited by the government we can tell them our view points.

David: You seem to think too many decisions are centralized in Accra.

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: Well, I have been shouting about that for some time now mainly because we haven’t really planned. I think certain things must be left at the local level. The Western Region is really the golden hen of our economy and our existence. If we plan the region together, it will have the potential to become the power house of growth within the West African sub region. It’s is a belief that I have because our culture is the basis of all this.

David: But your culture will come under siege because people from all over the world will come to Takoradi, along with their life style.

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: That’s one way of looking at it. If you have the strength of your culture you can use what comes in to enrich your culture.

David: But young people these days are only fascinated about what comes from outside?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: But that problem is really a phenomenon based on our education and cultural imperialism. 

David: Is there any sign that this will change?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: Based on my experience in the classrooms, based on the fact that I talk to people on the streets; I think people really want to go back to their roots. And if you don’t discover your roots you’ll never know the fruits that will come out of it. We have been taught that as far back as the 1900’s - the Sarbahs, the Sakyis, the Casely Hayfords -  all emphasized the need to focus on our roots.

David: Perhaps the reason that earlier generations of Ghanaians managed to keep their local culture alive was because of the absence of information technology. Today, young people are in London and the USA all day even though they live in Accra.

Nana Kobena Nketsia V:  Sometime ago, when the older generated finished their studies abroad, they were immediately on a plane or a ship back to this country. Now what happens? I’m afraid we are not in control of the tools that are coming into the country. Culture is a very interesting thing, if a person brings a tool in, that tool works in the interest of that culture; but it weakens your own culture unless you redirect that tool in the interest of your own culture. There are so many things that pollute our minds through the media; for example, anytime I hear somebody speak on radio and TV and say “even in America, even in Europe”, I just turn the TV off because the speaker’s mind is limited to Europe and America.

David: But Europe and America are advanced. They have health care systems in place, good schools, that is progress, is it not? They are advanced cultures.

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: Why should they be more advanced than us?

David: Because there is progress.

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: No. What we are doing now is working in the interest of those cultures. And by working in their interest, using their philosophies and ideologies we are suppressing our own and this is what we refer to as knowledge hegemony; we are therefore always on the weak side and they are always on the stronger side. And we keep asking why they are better than us, but we have forgotten that we were the ones who enhanced their culture. If we think that development means European then we might as well change the color of our skins.

David: What do communities in the Western Region expect from the oil industry?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: Well, they think that as soon as it comes, manna has fallen from heaven. And so one of the things that some of us chiefs are doing is helping manage expectations. This is the first time we have a representative on the Board of GNPC who is a Chief and the President of the Western Region House of Chiefs. I think it’s a very positive step.

David: What is positive about it?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V:  I think it’s going to serve as an intermediary between us and GNPC. Really, there must be communication between the people and the national body so that it does not impose decisions on us.

David: So this chief is on the Board of GNPC to convey the concerns of the people to the Board.

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: I presume so. I know him and therefore I think he’s going to make sure he forms a bridge between us and this national body. Colonialism has been in position; the white-man came and did what he wanted to do. In Essikado where I come from; we were moved out in order to create railways without any compensation; so we have 4/5 of Essikado lands belonging to government. I have never heard of a government that owns land. In 1901 they took Railway Location from my great-grandfather; the unfortunate thing is that we have also run it down. If we had dreamt in our own way, Location could have become one of the biggest fabrication centers for the whole of West Africa. The same goes for the coastal lands. What happens to the fishermen when those lands are taken from them? That is their source of livelihood. We have been consulted by Tullow Oil about how to stop canoes from going near the rigs and we stopped it in the national interest.  However the fishermen who have been stopped from fishing around the rigs will need to do something else to sustain them.

David: What are they going to be doing then?

 Nana Kobena Nketsia V: We might have to do re-training and this is why they must be given incentives and this is why we are thinking of creating a trust that can be used to educate and do other things for the people so that they can benefit indirectly. If you can have an individual partnering with a foreign company and making millions then a group of people should certainly be able to partner a company for much larger benefit than the individual.

David: What’s wrong with individual business people partnering foreign companies and benefitting?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: The problem is that we don’t want fronts. If we are going to have fronts, lets have a people’s front. I am an African and I think about the collective we all the time. We have to be careful about some of the things we say, it is our life blood, it is a paradigm that we operate from and we need to change the paradigm. That paradigm must be African centered, it must be selfless – the kind of paradigm that some of our elders used to struggle for in this country for example, Alfred Pobee Biney was one of the greatest Union leaders Ghana ever had; unfortunately, he lived in a chamber and hall and died there. Not even a Ghanaian flag was draped over his coffin. These were selfless people who fought for us.

David: Are there no longer people like that?

Nana Kobena Nketsia V: When you have people who are always thinking about outside the country, then we have a problem. Outside is warfare but maybe we are in cultural wars and we have agents here who are self destructing without awareness of any sort.  The problem is we are not aware of who we are and that is probably why after 1966 we seem to have lost direction.

David: But now there is a new opportunity with the discovery of oil.

Nana Kobena Nketsia V:  Yes, and we have the opportunity to change our economy and to create our “Ghanaian-ness ” so that we just don’t pay lip service. Our culture is about responsibilities, duties and obligations; and so every position held within our culture is a position of trust and it applies to even marriage - the coming together of two families.

David: Seems like you have your work cut out for you in the coming years.

Nana Kobena Nketsia V:  It is my duty, responsibility and my obligation to ensure that the oil and gas is of benefit to the people.  I don’t have an option and I say this on my own but I know that I’m also speaking for the chiefs of the region and that is why we keep having meetings about the things we need to do to ensure that our people are protected, our region benefits from the resource, the Ghanaians who have moved into our region also benefit from the resource and other Africans who have moved into our area also benefit from it.

David: Thank you for coming.

First Broadcast 5th September 2009, TV3 Ghana