Government effort to bring lasting peace to Dagbon is likely to suffer a major setback as the family of the late King of Dagbon, Ya-Naa Yakubu Andani stated emphatically that they will not be part of any arraignment to perform the late Ya-Naas funeral rites slated in November this year by the government.
In a strong worded statement issued in Tamale and signed by a representative of the family, Abdulai Yakubu Andani and copied to Zaa News, stated, the family is not part of the said time table of the funeral rites. The statement unequivocally stated that they will not agree for the funeral rites of Mahamadu Abdulai to be performed at the old Gbewaa Palace.
''This position is not negotiable; allowing the late Mahamadu Abdulai’s funeral at the old Gbewaa palace the family said will mean desecrating the memory of Ya-Naa Yakubu Andani II and all who were murdered along with him’’ the statement stressed.
The statement also said the family would be accomplices in rewarding crime because those who attacked the Gbewaa palace and committed murders would now be happy because their mission is accomplished.
According to the statement, the murderers after carrying out the dastardly act, mounted the severed head of Ya-Naa on a spear, and took it to the house of the son of Mahamadu Abdulai, Abdulai Mahamadu where he sat in state and received it.
It alleged that it’s this same Abdulai Mahamadu who Alhaji Limuna is implying will be elevated in status after the performance of his father’s funeral.
The family was responding to pronouncements made on the performance of the funeral rites of the late Dagbon king by the Northern Regional Minister who recently told Muslim clerics at a family gathering earlier this month that, government is feverishly preparing the old and current Gbewaa palaces for the performance of the funeral of Ya-Naa Yakubu Andani and Mahamadu Abdulai.
But the children described Alhaji Mohammed-Muniru Limuna’s comments as total disregard for Dagbon traditions and custom. The Minister at a dinner organized by an Islamic scholar earlier this month announced that government is bent on performing the funerals of chiefs in November this year.
The family reminded the minister of the electoral promise the party he represents, the NDC made to the people of Dagbon and to the Ghanaian people in general to ensure that those who murdered the Ya-Naa and several others in his royal retinue will be apprehended and made to face the full rigors of the law.
The NDC since assumption of office in 2009 has failed the Andani family and the people of Dagbon in ensuring justice. The family described as a farce the findings of the Wuaku Commission of the NPP era and that the findings were nothing but a laughable whitewash because it prefered charges that do not exist in Ghana’s statute books against two individuals making it easy for the court to throw the case out.
The statement said the NDC, upon pressure to fulfill its campaign promise in 2009 attempted to placate the Andani family, hurriedly arrested some suspects and without diligent investigations put them before court which deliberately bungled the prosecution to ensure that the case is thrown out of court. Despite that fact the Andani family had prompted the NDC government about the deliberate clumsiness of the work of the prosecution.
By the Minister’s recent comments, the Andani family said had pulled off the mask from the face of the NDC revealing it as a dishonest broker in the Dagbon crisis. According to the family, Alhaji Limuna usurped the role of the Kuga Naa, the most senior member of the elders of Dagbon and head of the Judicial Council of Dagbon.
The Kuga Naa, the children said is the only person who has the traditional and customary responsibility of making such announcements.
The children recollected similar pronouncement made by the then information Minister and presidential affairs in the erstwhile NPP administration, Jake Obetsebi Lamptey who flagrantly violated the customs and traditions of Dagbon. Jake Obetsebi on Wednesday March 27, 2002 the children said, announced almost in happily and in a very reckless manner, that the Ya-Naa Yakubu Andani II had been killed and that he had been beheaded.
Categories: