The Ada Local Council of Churches has held its annual royal conference with a call on traditional leaders to use their position to promote peace in their communities.
Reverend Emmanuel Oklemeh Tettey, the Somanya District Minister for the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PC), who made the call, said traditional leaders had a special and delicate role to play in unifying their subjects and developing their communities.
Rev. Tettey noted that residents within a traditional area look up to their traditional leaders; therefore, there was a need for royals with leadership qualities to be selected and enthroned to foster peace and bring about the needed development in the area.
According to him, even though everyone could come from a royal family, not every royal qualified to be enstooled as a chief or traditional leader, adding that leadership qualities must not be sacrificed during the selection processes of installing chiefs.
He said under British colonial rule, the role of chiefs was recognised and they were given the power to prosecute and even imprison law breakers.
However, some of these powers were curtailed after independence, rendering the chiefs less powerful.
“But now, chieftaincy in the country has developed, and therefore, chiefs now take instructions from the central government. This is where we are now. And so, as a chief in your community or state, you must know what your subjects want and provide for them through negotiations without discrimination,” he emphasised.
Evangelist Ebenezer Godbless Dan-Doe, the Chairman of the Ada Local Council of Churches, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the council had noticed that the glory and unity that used to be in the communities were fast diminishing, making it difficult for residents to cooperate with their traditional leaders.
“Our food and culture have also been lost, and therefore we must go back for them,” he said.
This, he said, informed the organisation of the conference to get experts to have a talk with the chiefs and queens in Ada to make them enlightened to save the cultural inheritance of the people.
He said another aim of the conference, which had over 200 participants, was to strengthen the union between the traditional leaders and the council of churches for community development.
Nene Tetteh Asigbey III, the President of the Ada Community Chiefs Association, said the conference was helpful as they learnt a lot from the resource persons.
He lauded the aim of the conference, which was to realign community focus towards restoring the former greatness of communities through traditional leadership.
He suggested that the conference could be held every quarter of the year.
