ost-colonial Africa has witnessed a phenomenal increase in conflicts of various magnitudes, mostly arising out of disagreements over a variety of issues including ownership of land, succession to chieftaincy titles, and resource allocation, among others. The West African sub-region has had its fair share of these upheavals, notably in Liberia, Sierra-Leone and Cote d’Ivoire. Ghana is among the few countries in West Africa perceived to be oasis of peace in a sub-region otherwise characterized by civil wars, rebel activities and general instability.
This image of Ghana, however, only masks a festering wound of communal violence, inter-ethnic conflicts and armed confrontations in the Northern part of Ghana. The root causes of these conflicts, which have almost become persistent, are largely traceable to the introduction of secular political authority/chieftaincy in areas which, before colonialism, were described as stateless or acephalous. The security of the entire country has often been compromised by the scope of unrest, wanton loss of lives and property, waste of the nation’s scarce resources and the dislocation of people.
Generally, scholars are divided in their discussion of the root causes of inter-ethnic conflicts that occur in Northern Ghana as a result of disputes over succession to a chieftaincy title or office. One school of thought traced the genesis of these conflicts to attempts by anthropologists and the colonial administration to categorize societies in that part of the country into acephalous/non-centralized and centralized groups, while the other school of thought identified other factors beyond the colonial enterprise.
This paper examines the genesis of the Mamprusi-Kusasi conflict in Bawku within the context of the first school of thought. It begins with a discussion of the settlement histories of the two groups and their pre-colonial traditional political structures, the colonial intrusion and the changes made to the existing political structures and implications to Mamprusi-Kusasi relations. Bawku is located in the north-easternmost corner of Ghana. It is a major town and market centre close to two international borders, Togo to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. Benin and Niger are also not too distant from Bawku.
By its geographical location and its commercial activities, Bawku has become a polyglot society of immigrants from other parts of Ghana and neighboring countries. Economic opportunities, largely commercial activities, have been the catalyst for the presence of immigrants in Bawku. Its diverse population engaged in myriad commercial enterprises has made Bawku increasingly cosmopolitan. The Kusasi (who claim to be the autochthones) and the Mamprusi (seen by Kusasi as warrior new-comers), however, have remained the dominant ethnic groups. The 2000 Population and Housing Census report showed a Kusasi majority followed by the Mamprusi.
The Kusasi constitute 75% and 45% of the total population in Bawku West and Bawku East respectively. At the heart of the Kusasi-Mamprusi conflict is an agglomeration of issues about litigations over allodial rights and chieftaincy. Both the Kusasi and the Mamprusi claim allodial ownership of Bawku, claims which are shrouded in their narrative histories of origin and derived from claims of autochthony. The Alhassan Committee which investigated land ownership in Northern Ghana in 1978 identified first-comership as one of the bases to claim of land ownership.
In Bawku, answers to the question of the first settlers are inconclusive and highly controversial. For one to dissect the question of the first settlers of Bawku, it is imperative to discuss the migration-and-settlement histories of the Mamprusi and the Kusasi. The Mamprusi claimed descent from Na Gbewaa, and traced their origins to Tanga, an area located east of Lake Chad, from where they settled at Pusiga near Bawku. Na Gbewaa became chief over the indigenous Gurma and some Kusasi. Upon his death, his three sons—Tohugo, Sitobu and Mantambu—migrated and founded Mamprugu, Dagbon, and Nanun respectively.
Mamprusi accounts date their presence in Bawku to the seventeenth century, and link it to military assistance they offered the Kusasi during the reign of Na Atabia as Nayiri (1690-1741). Incessant incursions of Bissa into Kusasi territory compelled them to seek the military intervention of the Nayiri of the Mamprusi. It…