Akwankwaa: Owusu Sekyere Agyeman in His Life and Times

Abstract

GHANA STUDIES / Volume 1 ISSN 1536-5514 / E-ISSN 2333-7168© 1998 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 91 AKWANKWAA Owusu Sekyere Agyeman in His Life and Times T. C. MCCASKIE I In January 1935 the Asante Confederacy was restored by the British. In August destoolment charges were preferred against the asantehene Osei Agyeman Prempeh II. This sparked a crisis that endured until September 1936, when the last of the identified conspirators was deported from Asante by British fiat.1 Both the Asante elite and the British administration rightly identified O. S. Agyeman as the originator and organizer of this attempt to remove the asantehene.2 In Asante office holders he inspired fear and loathing . He was “an insignificant person,” “a youngman of no account,” prompted by his “wickedness of spirit” and “ignorance of tradition” to fabricate calumnies against his “superior” in “a complete violation of native custom.” He was widely compared to a plague (smallpox or cholera), the eradication of which required isolation (i.e. deportation, since the precolonial option of mandatory execution was ruled out by the colonial government).3 In British officials O. S. Agyeman resonated as “an interesting study,” an “extremely clever” but “anti-social” man with a history of “political intrigue” for “monetary gain” but also because “he enjoys it” for “he likes being in the public eye and achieving notoriety.” J. R. Dickinson, DC (Kumase) and the author of these observations , found O. S. Agyeman’s name all over his files, but concluded with “regret that I do not know more of him.”4 Pressed by Accra for information in order to strengthen the legal case for deportation, Ag. CCA F. W. Applegate 1. W. Tordoff, Ashanti Under the Prempehs 1888–1935 (Oxford, 1965), 364–72 gives a useful overview of these events. 2. Throughout this paper Owusu Sekyere Agyeman is referred to as O. S. Agyeman (the name with which he signed his surviving correspondence, and by which he is generally recalled in Asante). The matter is complicated. Owusu Sekyere was born in Agona Wiamoase in 1887. In boyhood he was baptized Isaiah by the Basel Mission. As an adult he repudiated this name in a conscious act of “Africanization,” assuming in its stead the historically charged praise name Agyeman [lit. “defender of the nation”]. 3. National Archives of Ghana (henceforth NAG), Kumase, ARG 1/2/25/10, “Conspiracy against OtumfuoOseiAgyemanPrempehII,1935–6,”ProceedingsofMeetingsbetweentheCCAandthe asantehene-in-council, dd. Kumase, 12 and 14 October 1935, 17 August and 16 November 1936. 4. Ibid., DC (Kumase) to CCA, dd. Kumase, 8 September 1936. 92 Ghana Studies • volume 1 • 1998 requested the secondment of a CID Police Inspector to investigate O. S. Agyeman’s affairs.5 The following was the result of hurried police questioning and bureaucratic effort. Mr. OWUSU SEKYERE AGYEMAN was formerly known as Isaiah Owusu Agyeman and was educated in the Basel Mission Seminary at Begoro in the Akwapim District. After leaving school he entered the mercantile field. He was employed by the firm of Messrs. H. B. W. Russell as a typist. When he left Russells he was employed by the West African Lighterage Company, Kumasi in the capacity of Transport Clerk and Manager at Dunkwa and Ejura respectively. After a time he left the Lighterage Company and went to America sometime in 1923 for business purposes. On his return he was employed by various firms in Kumasi as a Produce Buyer. In the Political world, Agyeman has always been branded as a Political agitator. He was the cause of the Agona political troubles. He incited the Agona people to cause political unrest in the Agona Division since the days of the late Agonahene Kwame Boakye using his position as a royal of the Benkum Stool to further his end. It was he who caused the destoolment of Akwasi Achampong and placed the present Agonahene who was then his personal friend on the Stool. No sooner was Nana Kwadjo Apaw enstooled than he (Agyeman) endeavoured to undermine the new Chief’s authority. To some extent he succeeded and the Agona riot with its concomitant bloodshed and the subsequent emigration to Kwahu of the malcontents ensued. Agyeman was...