by Marie-Therese Belisle Nweke

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

This extract below represents one of the annoying aspects of the story about what’s happening in Ghana. Here are immigrants, or rather settlers, arriving in a place and being privileged over the indigenes. And, the government and police are of no use, because of the little money the settlers dangled before them. This really got me angry. See below:

“Daniel Kweku, a 44-year-old farmer in the family, says when they discovered that new residents in the village were still building on their land, despite the court order, they were incensed. They confronted workers on the construction site, showed them the injunction and ordered them to stop building. When the police arrived, it was Kweku and two other family members that were arrested. Three days later they were released without charges. Since their release, the tensions have only deepened.”

All this is happening in Kweku’s country! Having lived on the African continent for two thirds of my life, I can identify with these displaced and disadvantaged Ghanaians.

The same thing happened  in Northern Nigeria, whereby the Fulani, who are not indigenous to Nigeria, but are from the Sahel, arrived in Nigeria in the 19th century and, despite being a minority, have largely displaced the Hausa majority in Northern Nigeria with their emirs and religion, as well as the various indigenous people of Nigeria’s Middle Belt states. Today, these Fulani settlers are the terrorists, bandits, killer herdsmen and kidnappers creating the greatest insecurity situation in Nigeria’s history!

Similarly, when people from other countries emigrate to Belize, (some arrived as refugees from Guatemala in the 19th century), and engage in historical revisionisms to illegally obtain land rights, and are now privileged over the Creoles, whose Black and white ancestors built what is now Belize, I KNOW exactly how Kweku and members of his family feel . . .