Exclusive Interview with Osu Mantse (President of Greater Accra Regional House of Chiefs)

Interview with H.M. DF. Nii Okwei Kinka Dowuona VI, Osu Mantse, President of Osu Traditional Council, President of the Greater Accra Regional House of Chiefs, Member of the National House of Chiefs

Please tell us about the current priorities that require your immediate attention?

My immediate priority area is basic education, because what I have realised is that if you don’t have a solid foundation, it is hard to build on in the future. Currently looking at my area and the greater Accra region, I have noticed that there are a lot of school drop outs. That doesn’t act as an encouragement to stay in school because kids come out and see there brothers or sisters in the streets and they are not motivated to stay in school. That is one of my priorities, to strengthen basic education, providing the logistics and bringing together a traditional council with the elders to strengthen education. We have created an education fund and a school management committee where we have the traditional councils, the teachers and parents as members.  We are collaborating and finding ways and means to encourage children from the ages of 5 to 15 to be in school and to read and write effectively. Once they have a solid foundation they can build on it.

The second priority is tourism because from my research we have found that tourism cuts across every field. If you want people to visit your community you have to keep your community clean, you have to have places of convenience that people can access, you have to make sure your people know the history of your community, and you have to learn and be able to work as tour guides. People have to be friendly because if we want this to be a tourist attraction we need to educate the people so that each and every person coming here knows that they can approach someone for directions and information. Additionally, we have a lot of ancestral spots and tourist attractions spots which have not been packaged well. We have identified those places and we are trying to package them and find out a lot of history about them. We want to put that up on a website so that people can see what there is in our area. We are also thinking about having a tourism office in the Palace so everyone who comes here can get all the information. We also have a lot of artefacts from our departed chiefs, the items they used, their drums, looms etc. Currently we are trying to set up a museum, it is nearly completed actually, it will be the Royal Museum and it will house these things and it will offer a brief history of our culture.

I want to make sure I leave a legacy so that my people will benefit from the years that I reign. That is why my priority is education.

When you get here you see in front of the Palace a cleared area, at first there was a building there. The people living there have been relocated into a better building. We are also looking at sanitation because we want the area to be clean. We have seen, especially on the coast that there is a lot of plastic waste. The drains that carry water into the sea are often filled with rubbish and so it all gets washed back onto the shore. We are embarking on a plan to educate people about how to handle waste. Another issue from waste is that it creates problems with mosquitoes. We are trying to educate people to make sure that they keep their environment clean. We are trying to get people to separate their waste because we are trying to introduce recycling; it´s all about education. That is what we are embarking on.

In terms of health, we have a traditional council that has taken it upon itself to organise health screenings. We engage doctors to come to the community and they screen the people free of charge so that we can assess their health status. These are some of the things we are putting in place to revamp the community.

In terms of youth, we have seen that most of the youth here don’t have employable skills. Although they are drop outs from school, we believe that they still have potential. It is not the end of the line for them as not everyone can be in school and go on to get a degree. We have a plan to equip them with employable skills. We are going round with vocational institutes, namely the NVTI, the OIC, social welfare, Hotcass, and YMCA. We have sat down with them, trying to negotiate with them for a better trade system whereby we provide them with logistics and tools in return for them to take on the students and teach them employable skills. That is something that is ongoing. We have also sent letters to churches and mosques and within the community inviting the youth to assess this opportunity.

When it comes to those tourism initiatives, are you doing this by yourself or are you partnering with other institutions?

I believe that if you have the vision and you know where you want to go, you start initiating the process before anybody becomes interested in helping you. We have formed a tourism committee which has members from the museums and monuments, the Ghana tourism board, and the Metropolitan Assembly, there are consultants and we are there too. It cuts across the whole breadth of the tourism industry. We are now open to any assistance that comes from anywhere. There is also a professor who is an archaeologist doing a project in the castle. She is partnering with us to help us establish and open the museum. We are always hoping for any assistance be it cash or support of any kind for us to be able to make the project a reality.

You already discussed the cleanliness of the city, I believe the President has expressed his desire to make Accra the cleanest city in Ghana; could you elaborate more on that?

I remember during my childhood days, we had in place a system where people from the metropolitan assemblies were supervising from house to house making sure that you kept your area, your environment and your gutters clean. With the introduction of the municipal assemblies and then the government trying to take over sanitation, it meant that the people became relaxed, because there was the perception that it was government work, and that the government would come in and do it for them. Nevertheless, the government is not going to go into the houses, so if you create filth, it is you that is going to suffer from malaria and mosquito bites. We need to educate people about keeping a clean environment and it has to go vis-a-vis the government making sure that all the refuse that is dumped and collected is taken away properly. It has to go hand in hand with education. Government has to do its part. They have to say to people exactly where they can dump their refuse. We also need to educate people on separating their rubbish because there is waste that can be recycled. People don’t really know that yet so they dump everything together in one place. We need to educate people and tell them how beneficial recycling is; especially educating people about the positive effects it can have on reducing disease. With this, I believe the drive to making this city the cleanest, will come to realisation. For me as a traditional leader in my small corner, we are proud of our festival and so we have a sanitation day whereby each and every household comes out and cleans their gutters and their houses because we want a clean environment for our festival. Those are measures we have put into place for keeping the city clean.

What is your personal vision not only for the region but for Ghana itself?

As the President of the Regional House of Chiefs, I have noticed that we need to bring together all the title holders because when we say chiefs it is not only the paramount chiefs who are chiefs; each and every paramount chief has elders, you may know the paramount chief but what about the others? What about the title holders, what about the office holders, what about the family heads? These are people who decide who sits on the throne. If we don’t have data about these people it will be very difficult in the case of any disputes to know exactly who to talk to and what to do. It is my vision to register each and every title officer in the chieftaincy institution for the greater Accra region so we can have that data about these people. It needs to be updated all the time so that if there is ever an issue, we know who is in charge or who to contact. That is one of my priorities. This will bring respect to the chieftaincy institution and that is one thing that we want to establish. Also I want to interact more with the people because we are the eyes and ears of the people as custodians of the land and we need to be abreast of the people and know their needs and provide them with what they need because when we leave it to the government, eventually the government comes and goes, but we are here with the people until the lord calls us. I want to make sure I leave a legacy so that my people will benefit from the years that I reign. That is why my priority is education.

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