<i>Naam</i> Making in Dagbon and the Legitimation of Traditional Authority

Abstract

This paper focuses on the “naam” making processes—or the installation of chiefs and the investiture of the king—which has been neglected by scholars writing about the Dagbon chieftaincy in the Northern Region of Ghana. Rather, scholars have paid attention to the internal chieftaincy disputes that have bedeviled the kingdom for about a century now. Using content analysis and in-depth interviews with selected chiefs, their elders, kingmakers, and drum historians of the Dagomba in the Northern region of Ghana, this paper provides an analysis of king making as well as chief making process. The paper argues that whilst chieftaincy as an institution could be sociologically considered non-rational, successful “naam” making legitimates the chieftaincy institution enabling its actors (the chiefs) to interact with modern state institutions.