23/07/2025
We Don't Have Tribes Anywhere in Africa
Did I hear my brother Haruna, the Minister or Education, insist at the Northern Development forum that the North is full of 'tribes'?
At this age and time we Africans still cling on to these terrible, colonialist, and very condescending terms used by European/western scholars on Africans? Nkrumah at some point even banned this term from being used on Ghanaian ID cards, as the British colonialists did on us!
There are no tribes in northern Ghana or any part of Africa, for that matter! We have ethnic groups!
Btw, as I keep saying, we northerners shouldnt succomb to pressure from ignorant southern Ghanaians to make statements that seem to suggest that we are not a united northern Ghana.
On the surface, we seem to have many ethnicities in northern Ghana. But in reality we are more closely related than we think.
My colleague scholars and I have continued to use linguistic and historical evidence to show how closely related we are. Over 90% of northerners are of MABIA-speaking ethnicities.
And even the Gonja that early southern Ghanaian historians mistook to be more related to Guan are actually more related to MABIA. Recently, I have been on a mission in many internet fora to show that Gonja, a MANDE group, are not Guan! They are more related to the major ethnicities of northern Ghana like Sisaala, Vagla, etc.
President Limann warned us against such statements that go to weaken northern Ghanaian solidarity.
I am sure that is not what the honourable minister intended, but we must resist pressure from ignorant southern Ghanaians to stress how different we northern Ghanaians are from each other.
~ Prof. Dr. Adams Bodomo
