SHOULD NPP REALLY DE-AKANISE TO SAVE ITS EXISTENCE?

The recent charges by Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe, Yaw Boateng Gyan and earlier by Lawyer Ayikoi Otoo that the NPP is an Akan party and that non-Akans do not feel very much at home in the Party has re-ignited the long standing debate as to whether NPP is indeed an Akan or a non-Akan party. Some of these propaganda have been narrowed further to the age old perception that the Party is also riddled with an Ashante and Akim rivalry, a topic which I will attend to in my next treatise. However let me deal with the Akanisation issue for now. We can simplistically say that de-akanising the NPP means choosing a non-akan Flagbearer or northernising the Party more and stabilizing it in the Ga lands or making in-roads into the Southern Volta lands. Beautiful and eulogic but do we really think the NPP’s woes are simply based on whether it is Akan or Non-Akan? Again, what is the ethnic composition of Ghana, and who are non-Akans or Akans in Ghana?

The Non-Akan areas in Ghana are the three northern regions, southern parts of Volta Region, Ga, including Dangme and some very small non-akan enclaves in largely Akan areas. Demographically, the people called Akans are found from the upper reaches of the Volta Region, through the Oti and Afram Plains, across Brong Ahafo Region, through Ashanti, Eastern (excluding the Dangme parts), Central and Western Regions of Ghana. The Bawules and Nzemas may be contestable as Akans but I call them Akans because on the other side of the border in Ivory Coast their counterparts there, the Aowins, are considered Akans.  Used very loosely therefore the people of Akan extraction live in the forest regions of modern day Ghana and constitute about 70% of Ghana’s population. Thus, a party, which could be, truly tagged Akan could by right be the dominant party to rule in Ghana, but