THE MAN OKLEMEKUKU AZZU MATE KOLE – KONOR OF MANYA KROBO (1939 – 1990) скачать в хорошем качестве

THE MAN OKLEMEKUKU AZZU MATE KOLE – KONOR OF MANYA KROBO (1939 – 1990)

THE MAN OKLEMEKUKU AZZU MATE KOLE – KONOR OF MANYA KROBO (1939 – 1990) I was a little kid when the immediate past Konor of Manya Krobo, Oklemekuku Azzu Mate-Kole checked out of life on 15th March, 1990, shortly after celebrating the Golden Jubilee anniversary of his enstoolment. I was too young to have encountered him but I have memories of him riding in his palanquin and sprinkling millet during a procession from a Ngmayem festival durbar in the late eighties, close to four decade. My Dad had brought me and my brothers from Kpong where we were based at the time to watch the procession. As the chiefs processed, my dad, who was an incurable culture enthusiast, carried us in turn on his shoulder to watch the display from a distance. As a kid aged just about five or six years, that was the closest I came to the man whose contributions to the development of his native people and national development during his 50-year reign shot him to prominence and also endeared him to many. The more you read about this man or hear tales about his reign, the more your estimation of him soars. If you haven’t experienced Oklemekuku well enough, in case you haven’t heard him speak, watch this short documentary which was put together by the BBC in the mid-forties on the subject of whether mother tongue (Dangme) as the medium of instruction to pupils in Basic Schools brought better result than English did. Pay attention to his diction, the ease with which he rattled the Queen’s English, his reasoned argument in favour of the use of mother tongue as a medium of instruction, and the general aura of royalty he retained. Lest I forget, the first of the two teachers in the video was Mr. Andrews Kofi Addo, one of the foremost scholars to have sprung up from Atotsonya, Odumase-Krobo, the community from which I hail. He was an elder brother of Prof. Samuel Kwablah Tetteh Agidi Addo, formerly of the University of Ghana and a mentor to my late father. Mr. S. K. Addo was the man from whom my father derived the inspiration to become an educationist. So profound was his influence on my dad that he hardly recounted his journey through life – and the modest height he had attained - without profuse references to Mr. Addo. It was therefore not a surprise when we discovered after my dad’s passing that he made a copious reference to Mr. Addo in his autobiography. I understand the other teacher in the video (in the shorts) was one Mr. Sumney from Agormanya. May the work of these forebears – in whom we now pride - continue to inspire us, the living, to strive harder to outdistance their landmarks.