Civil society organisation, ADAM-GH has challenged President Nana Addo that if he was not in explicit support, he should come out and condemn the “dangerous ethnocentric and tribal bigotry” that is being exhibited in society recently, including in school textbooks.
ADAM-GH’s challenge is coming amidst widespread public anger against the unsavoury content of textbooks printed by a certain Badu Nkansah Publications for the Ghana Education Service (GES) to be used as teaching materials for Ghanaians basic schools.
The textbook is full of ethnocentric stereotypes and blatant twisting of Ghana’s socio-political history.
In some of the books, the authors pushed the tribal card that stereotypes Ewes from the Volta Region as being fixated on voodoo, while in another book, the authors used strong words describing Ghana’s first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah as a dictator.
The textbooks claim Dr. Nkrumah squandered Ghana’s resources. This is despite the fact that Dr. Nkrumah had built more infrastructure in his six years in power than any other government that ad succeeded him.
“Today, Nana Addo’s government describes a tribe that the founder of the 4th Republic and the longest-serving head of state comes from as “JuJu” People and “Inward Looking” People. Unfortunate tendencies such as these put our democracy in danger if we begin to undermine and destroy the image of certain tribes to our future generation, seeing other tribes as inferior over some tribes in the country,” AZUBILA SALAM EMMANUEL, the Executive Secretary of ADAM-GH stated in a press released made available to Whatsup News.
The statement continues: “ADAM-GH also sees another dangerous, mischievous, and misleading attempt to twist our cherished history by undermining Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of blessed memory as not being the founder of the Republic of Ghana even when he was posthumously voted the “African of the Millennium” and hailed by well-meaning people across Africa and the globe at large as an iconic figure and an epitome of leadership.”
The group which is one of the strong pressure groups in Ghana warned in their statement that the nibbling tendencies of tribal bigotry and historical revisionism is likely to divide Ghana “following what we describe as an irresponsible and reckless continuous attempt to denigrate our brothers from the Volta region.”
ADAM-GH notes that President Akufo Addo was quick to speak up when his tribe, the Akyems were roped into a description that his inner circle were “Akyem Mafia”.
“ADAM-GH could recall that the President of the Republic H.E Nana Addo called on us, Civil Society Organizations… as a whole to condemn in no uncertain terms the AKYEMS SAKAWA BOYS comments made by the Member of Parliament of Bolgatanga Central, Hon. Isaac Adongo which was echoed by former President John Mahama via his Twitter handle.”
The Akufo Addo administration is increasingly being regarded by the Ghanaians public as a dangerous regime that thrives on divisiveness and vindictiveness, leading to a slow expansion of a culture of silence and insecurity in the country.