By Dennis Peprah, GNA
Sunyani, (Bono), Jan. 28, GNA-National Peace Council (NPC) on Wednesday appealed to kingmakers and royals to do more to ensure that rightful candidates are always enstooled whenever a paramount stool becomes vacant to stem the growing chieftaincy disputes country.
Alhaji Suallah Abdallah Quandah, the Bono Regional Executive Secretary of the NPC who gave the advice also called for national codification of chieftaincy procedures in the supreme interest of the nation.
He expressed worry that chieftaincy disputes did not only threaten the prevailing national peace and social cohesion, however disrupted progressive national development.
Alhaji Quandah gave the advice in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sunyani on the sidelines of side-lines of the opening session of a day’s preparatory review and reflection dialogue on challenges to chieftaincy succession in the Bono Region.
It was on the theme: “Ensuring peaceful chieftaincy successions: The role of stakeholders”, and attended by chiefs and queens, security service as well as some Heads of Departments and Agencies.
The Bono Regional Secretariat of the NPC organised the dialogue to identify and proffer realistic measures to tackle the root cause of chieftaincy disputes and litigations in the region.
Alhaji Quandah highlighted the essential role of the chieftaincy institution towards facilitating accelerated national development and called for the need to devise more realistic strategies to stem the disputes.
He regretted that nine out of the about 19 paramountcies in the Bono Region were bedeviled with chieftaincy disputes and called on the Bono Region House of Chiefs to be expeditious in resolving those disputes.
Earlier in a welcoming address, Professor Mrs Mercy Afua Adutwumwaa Derkyi, the Bono Regional Chairperson of the NPC noted that chiefs and queen mothers were custodians of culture, land, and values, symbolizing unity and continuity.
Yet, she regretted that chieftaincy succession disputes continued to pose serious challenges in many of the local communities, warning that when succession issues were not well managed, families divided, communities polarized and development stalled.
“These situations don’t only affect traditional authorities; they affect local government, security agencies, investors, and ordinary citizens who simply want to live in peace”, she stated.
She expressed the hope that the dialogue would help identify the gaps in customary and administrative systems that continued to create room for misunderstanding and conflict.
GNA
Kenneth Odeng Adade