We Can’t Be Free Yet Blame Colonial Masters; Otumfuo Calls For Ghana-Trinidad Cooperation
The Monarch of the Asante Kingdom, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II has underscored the need for former colonies like Ghana and Trinidad to explore mutually beneficial economic and trade opportunities in steering their development decades after gaining independence.
His Majesty posits that the destinies of these countries must be taken into their own hands and holds that their economic struggles should not be blamed on colonial masters who have long emancipated them.
During a courtesy call at the official residence of the Prime Minister for Trinidad and Tobago, Dr The Honourable Keith Christopher Rowley, on Monday, July 31, 2023, Otumfuo noted that his visit was to sound a wake-up call for the two countries to do the needful.
“I’m here to look at the various {options} using this visit to also to {ask} my people here that after emancipation what next? We cannot continue to be on our own and blame the people who enslaved us. They’ve given us freedom but I still feel my people have problems here so after emancipation what next? We come to assure them that we can do better for ourselves. We should make sure that the independence that we have we will take the opportunity to develop ourselves in a way that will enhance our destiny.”
“We are…not here just for the Emancipation Day celebration but to affirm the brotherliness and a fatherliness and also to see how best we can collaborate in relation to development and a south-south cooperation to see how best the two of us- this country and Ghana- can collaborate,” he continued.
He further noted that though the two countries have entered a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), they must be made effective for development.
“I believe strongly that we have to up that cooperation. I know up to the political level you’ve signed some agreements but I don’t want that to be shoved into the shells because that is what happens. I come here not as a politician but as the King of Asante who has a blood relation with my people and I seek their welfare and the welfare of Trinidad.”
Otumfuo Osei Tutu II is on a five-day working visit to Trinidad and Tobago to participate in the Emancipation Day celebration on August 1, 2023.
