J. B. DANQUAH IS BAD NEWS!

Just found an old and interesting post here
Author: Nana Akyea Mensah,
Location: Apedwa-Ghana (Belgium)
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:03:00

Hello Mr. Joseph Mensah Oti-Asirifi,

This is an extremely st***d article you have written here! Shame unto you!!!

I will make this short. You wrote:

"Undoubtedly the role of Nkrumah in the quest towards independence was enormous and no thinker can deny that but in the laws of team work the goal is more important than the role. Members of the U.G.C.C formed the goal for independent and gave it a vision which directed the consciousness for self rule."

There is a great confusion in your write-up between goal and role. The break-up of the UGCC arose as a result of the differences between the key players about the goal and how to achieve this.

The role each of them played was based upon their individual understanding of the goals they were pursuing for the Gold Coast. The fact that J.B. Danquah saw nothing wrong with human sacrifices and ritual murders speak volumes about his goals for the people of Ghana, and his understanding of our human rights!

It was not by accident that the UGCC was full of the elites in our society. and was making no effort to mobilize the ordinary people! It was because they were planning a transfer of power from the colonial rulers to the local elites to lord it over the rest of us, whilst defending the interests of the colonialists. Danquah's primary ambition was to become a colonial secretary, not a prime minister! The reason why the British abandoned him was his insane defence of his brothers whom he manipulated to murder Nana Akyea Mensah, the Odikro of Apedwa in February 1944. Can you believe that J.B. Danquah was defending his murderous relatives as royals of the Akyem Abuakwa State and not British subjects, and by the laws of Akyem Abuakwa, ritual murder to blacken the Akyem stool is not against Akyem customary law? That was when the British realised that the guy must have went through Oxford all right, but Oxford had not gone through him! Rejected by the British who hanged his own brothers and choose Busia as a favourite puppet, Danquah turned his anger at them by concentrating on giving them as much hell he could raise. He maintained specific contacts, singed up with the CIA and jumped on the American bandwagon. It became so difficult for him to mobilize even the elites because of the role he played on the Akyea Mensah murder case that he had to call on Paa Grant for assistance. Of course, the motivations of Paa Grant was obviously different from that of JB, who never gave up his life-long ambition of being the Lord all over the Gold Coast!

The reason why we celebrate Nkrumah is not so much of his role, however great that was. It is because we identify with his goals. The reason why we are ready to sh*t and piss upon Danquah was because of his wicked attempts to sabotage these noble goals for his extremely murderous and selfish ends!

The ends we seek to identify in Nkrumah are so eloquently expressed and scattered across his numerous speeches and books. Here is one of them:

“We in Africa who are pressing now for unity are deeply conscious of the validity of our purpose. We need the strength of our combined numbers and resources to protect ourselves from the very positive dangers of returning to colonialism in disguised forms. We need it to combat the entrenched forces dividing our continent and still holding back millions of our brothers. We need it to secure total African liberation. We need it to carry forward our construction of a socio-economic system that will support the great mass of our steadily rising population at levels of life which will compare with those in the most advanced countries” - Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite

I shall end with the following comment I sent to my grandson, Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr.

ENJOY YOU ILLUMINATION:

J. B. DANQUAH IS BAD NEWS!
Nana Akyea Mensah, | follow me on Twitter:-twitter.com/TheOdikro | 9/28/2009 1:16:00 AM
Grandson,

J.B Danquah was implicated seriously in ritual murders and human sacrifices! He is not fit to be projected as a role-model for our young ones. Not only because of his known role as a C.I.A pawn, and attempts to disenfranchise an overwhelming Ghanaians who did not have property be denied the right to vote! No, Nkrumah successfully dealt with that. He insisted on the "right to vote" "for the farmers, the workers, and the women", in short, "for all Ghanaians!" This is not why Danquah deserves no thanks whatsoever.

As to why it is very important to exclude Danquah in any national honours, I wish to clearly state the reason as being his invilvent in human sacrifices and ritual murders! He instigated his own brothers to kill his half-brother, Nana Akyea Mensah, the Odikro of Apedwa!

Apedwa, Akyem Abuakwa, Ghana

"On August 21st, 1943, the king of Akyem Abuakwa state in Ghana, Nana Sir Ofori Atta I, died. With a population of about 250,000, it was a rich state whose wealth was based upon cocoa cultivation and upon gold and diamond-mining concession rents and royalties. Akyem's funerary rites are long drawn out and this drew to a close in February 1944. On the final day, the chief of one of the towns that comprised a politically salient group in the state, the Amantoo mmiensa, disappeared whilst in the state capital, Kyebi. Akyea Mensah's loss was reported to the Akyem Abuakwa State Council which comprised the senior chiefs in the kingdom and the state's senior bureaucrats; the loss was also reported to the local office of the Gold Coast police. An extensive hue and cry yielded nothing. In the following days the Gold Coast police received a number of anonymous letters alleging that he had been ritually murdered; the police, while being suspicious, were disinclined to act on rumour alone. Gossip was spreading. A week passed and the letters piled up. The people of Apedwa, the missing..." Death and politics: West Africa in the 1940s. by Richard Rathbone

According to the case officer, According to ACP/Mr Nuamah, "the climax of the week-long funeral of the late Okyehene Nana Sir Ofori Atta I was set for Sunday, 27th February, 1944. The last rite marking the end of the funeral was the celebration of the WEREMPE custom, which was the act of blackening the stool of the late chief, formally making him an ancestor in the line of kings."

In the evening of Saturday, 26th February, 1944 all the principal players in the stool blackening ritual assembled for final preparations.

The question was which human being's blood was to be used for the ceremony. Present was Nana Akyea Mensah, Chief of Apedwa, and traditionally commander of the Okyehene's royal bodyguard.

Nana Mensah quite clearly explained to his colleagues that times had changed. The colonial authorities at the Christianborg Castle in Osu had taken over the power of life and death from the chiefs. It was no longer possible for the chiefs to sit anywhere and condemn anybody – if they used any human blood in the ritual, the Gold Coast Police would arrest them.

This did not go down well with the Akyem fundamentalists who wanted human blood and considered Nana Akyea Mensah's intervention as an attack on their traditions and power. They opposed Nana Mensah. J. B. Danquah, a member of the royal family and leading barister countered the authority of this "Kwaw Botwe" Krakyi (Akyea Mensah was not a lawyer, he completed his secondary education at Mfatsipim College as Emmanuel Ohemeng and and then worked as a clerk for the Akyem Abuawa State. The superior legal prowess of J.B. Daquah directed that the Akyem Abuakwa State was independent of the British Colonial rule, and the laws of Akyem Abuakwa State were not dependent upon British colonial law.

J.B Danquah encouraged and assured legal protection to the conspirators: Asare Apietu, Kwame Kagya, Kwaku Amoako Atta, Kwadwo Amoako, Kwasi Pipim, Opoku Ahwenee, A. E. B. Danquah and Owusu Akyem-Tenteng wh were later found guilty of ritually killing Nana Akyea Mensah, and sentenced to death by hanging on the neck until declared dead.

As dastard as J.B. Danquah's act of refusing to stand up and be counted against human sacrifices, he also opportunisically found occassion to silence as a terrible scandal involving financial improprieties vis-a-vis the Akyem Abuakwa State coffers and J.B. Danquah's personal ambitions to be Home Secretary, over the years.

Nana Akyea Mensah also knew some secrets about Danquah's attempts to "cause financial loss to the Akyem Abuakwa State. He was therefore anxious that an angry Akyea Mensah would not reveal such secrets. Thus whilst the chiefs were simply after any "royal blood", J. B. Danquah was clearly after Akyea Mensah's blood!

In the night of the same day, they planned that when Nana Akyea came in the morning for the rites, meaning to use the blood of goats and sheep, they would kill him and use his blood – after all he was top royal blood, and the only mole in their midst.

And so Nana Mensah was killed for the ritual. But his ghost did not rest. His ghost was so busy that when Mrs. Sarah Esi Grant-Acquah, the daughter of Paa Grant was tranfered as a teacher to Kyebi, this was her reaction:

"After completing my teaching training, I was posted to Cape Coast Government Girls School. It was a big fight with Father going to Cape Coast to teach.

After less than one year, I was informed that I had been transferred from Cape Coast to Kyebi Government School. I cried and refused to go to Kyebi, so I traveled to Sekondi to tell Father to write to the Education Department not to transfer me. I was also afraid to go to Kyebi because of the Akyea Mensah murder case.

Father listened to my story told amid tears and said, “I told you not to go and work. You did not listen to me and now that you are transferred you are refusing to go. If you want to work, then you must be prepared to go on transfer if the authorities say so”.

“Akyea Mensah's case has nothing to do with teaching and school. Nana Ofori Atta is my friend. I will give you a letter for him and you will be looked after”. ("In the beginning was… PAA GRANTAnd the UGCC" by Mrs. Sarah Esi Grant-Acquah, the daughter of Paa Grant, National Commission on Culture, Ghana Cultural News, Wednesday, February 14, 2007, ghanaculture.gov.gh)

Nana Mensah's ghost haunted them so much that eventually they all confessed, were arrested, and after a famous jury trial, they were all condemned and hanged.

It is important to note that even in the defence of these ritual murderers, Danquah did not change the private counsel he had given them prior to the act. He kept insisting in court on the right of the Akyem Royal Family to kill whomever it pleased them to do so! He insisted it was none of the business of the British! He assembled all the right wing lawyers in town, Nii Armah Ollenu, Edward Akuffo Addo, (Nana Akuffo Addo's father was involved) and many more! I am doing the research, I shall furnish the full names and later publish this as an article!

This is the story, chilling to the bone marrow that Gloria Yartey has scripted under the title "WHERE IS THE CHIEF?"

The role of Dr. J. B. Danquah in the murder of Nana Akyea Mensah, his my own half-brother, need to be clearly pointed out.

Kwame Kyeretwie, popularly known as Dr. J. B. Danquah, the doyen of Gold Coast politics, by the NPP, whose political ambitions were eating deep into the coffers of the Abuakwa State, as a respected man of law, trained at Oxford University, ought to have been the first person know better to put his feet down to stop this barbaric practice once and for all! Akyea Mensah specifically addressed him to provide some support to back up his argument "before the colonial government descends upon us and hanged us by the neck until we died for commiting a ritual murder!"

What sealed his fate was the threat to reveal how Kwame Kyeretwie was misapplying Akyem Abuakwa State Council money for his personal trips to London and living beyond his means at the expense of everybody, and causing financial loss to the Akyem Abuakwa state!

Akyea Mensah made the mistake of making it clear to expose him if anybody was killed, if he did not stand up and to be counted!

I can already hear Nana Akyea Mensah defending himself this way:

"He was ready to continue such savage customs! It was no blackmail to ask him to do the right thing. I was very desperate! His reaction was that I was trying to blackmail him and refused to reason with me! This was no excuse to lobby for my head, but that is exactly what he did!

Who would have thought that my own brother with a doctorate degree could stoop so low? I was so sure that as the commander of the Amantoo mmiensa, no one would dare to touch me! I was only doing my best to defend others, and J.B Danquah encouraged and assured legal protection to the conspirators: Asare Apietu, Kwame Kagya, Kwaku Amoako Atta, Kwadwo Amoako, Kwasi Pipim, Opoku Ahwenee, A. E. B. Danquah and Owusu Akyem-Tenteng The next day, I was to be the victim myself!"

History is the science of establishing facts and interpreting them. If your Danquah was a Captain, don't forget that he was bribed to score goals against the people of Ghana. Nkrumah had to break his leg in order to save the match!

Cheers! Have a nice day!

Nana Akyea Mensah, The Odikro
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