Minister of State for Culture and Chieftancy Sampson Kwaku Boafo of Ghana
Sampson Kwaku Boafo has called on Christians to unite to help raise the standard of music in the church.
Boafo was addressing a General Meeting of the Volta Regional House of Chiefs in Ho on Wednesday.
Boafo said his Ministry was about to propose amendments to the Chieftaincy Law that would give additional leverage to the role of chiefs in conflict resolution.
Mr Boafo said he had made several attempts to contact the LOC on the need to involve the Ministry in its programmes but all attempts had ended on deaf ears.
If Sampson Kwaku Boafo has a vision but not arrogance attitudes towards these Ghanaians, he wouldnt have gone back to Ghana empty handed.
Mr Boafo said this in an address read for him at the celebration of the Akomase festival of the chiefs and people of Senya Bereku Traditional Area during which Nenyi Akondoh XI was outdoored as Oma Ode Fey (Paramount Chief) of the traditional area.
Mr Boafo said under the Act anyone or group wishing to install a paramount chief or any other chief was required to give two weeks advance notice to the House of Chiefs.
Mr Boafo said the NHIS had been established to address that need and urged the chiefs to educate their subjects to embrace it because of its usefulness.
Mr Boafo said the children were taken from their parents through deceit and made to work long hours in hazardous conditions on farms, rivers and mines thus jeopardizing their health and education.
Mr Boafo said it had become very important for all occupants of black stools to carefully indicate in writing, the origin of their stools, brief history of previous occupants of the stools and unacceptable behaviour of occupants of the stool which may attract sanctions.
Mr Boafo said one of the major functions of the ministry was to initiate, formulate and ensure the efficient and effective implementation of policies, plans, and programmes and projects to preserve, develop, promote and preserve Ghanaian heritage, institution, arts, architectural sites and values.
Hilla Limann, Boafo was the vice chairman of the Committee on Labour, Social Welfare and Co-operatives and House Committee.
A member of the National Council of the party since 1992, Boafo has served on many committees, including the finance and fund raising committee, policy advisory committee and the National Executive Council, representing the Ashanti Region and the NPP MPs group in Parliament.
On the international scene, Boafo was in Britain as an Election Observer in 1997.
Boafo is a lawyer by profession and was trained at the University of London, where he graduated with honours in 1971, having read a Bachelor of Law and LLB degree programmes.
One-time National Secretary of the Ghana Bar Association and member of the International Bar Association, Boafo has attended conferences in Vienna, in Austria, in 1984 and New York in 1985.
While in London, Boafo was appointed part-time Crown Prosecutor and established the Immigration Law Centre at Kingsland High Street in Dalston, London.
Boafo has an honorary doctorate degree conferred on him in the 1990's by the Canada Christian College in London.
The Culture and Chieftaincy Minister Sampson Kwaku Boafo has paid a courtesy call on the overlord of the Mamprugu traditional area, Nayiri Naa Bohagu Mahami Abdulai at his palace at Nalerigu.
Mr Boafo said this will eventually solve most problems facing the chieftancy institution.
Sampson Kwaku Boafo is in charge of this new and important ministry.
Mr Boafo said it was against this background that the Ministry had drafted and laid before Parliament the Chieftaincy Bill pending approval.
Mr Boafo expressed concern about the perennial chieftaincy disputes in the country and appealed to the National and 10 Regional Houses of Chiefs to collaborate with the Ministry in resolving such disputes.
Mr Boafo said even though chiefs were barred from participating actively in party politics by the 1992 Constitution, they could intervene to help avert potential situations that could breed unnecessary tensions during the impending elections.
The Minister for Chieftaincy and Culture, Mr Sampson Kwaku Boafo has asked traditional rulers, particularly those from the three northern regions to be development oriented.
Mr Boafo said the programme was to revive some of the rich cultural values to promote tourism.
Boafo said despite his decision not to contest, he would be available for any type of assistance any New Patriotic Party (NPP) member who would be ready to contest might need.
Addressing an emergency meeting of the newly created Atwima-Mponua district assembly at Nyinahin in Ashanti on Tuesday, Mr Boafo said nation building is a herculean task, which must not be placed on any individual or any small corporate entity.
against an installation or enskinment of a chief.
and energies of the top echelons of Ga Mashie Royal Houses.
Answering questions on what the Ministry was doing to resolve the numerous chieftaincy disputes pending at the various Regional House of Chiefs, Mr Boafo said the project to codify the lines of succession had however been put on hold for lack of funding.
Mr Boafo said the absence of counsels at some of the Regional Houses of Chiefs to assist Judicial Committees of the Houses as required by the 1992 Constitution had brought delays in resolving chieftaincy disputes.
Mr Boafo said this in Accra on Tuesday at the launch of Cultural Awareness Month 2008 slated for November under the theme: Attitudinal change, the power in culture.
Boafo said the project would impact positively on the economic and social activities of Kumasi and its environs and appealed to the people in the region to support it.
In the novel alliance of traditional and neo-liberal values, Boafo has become the patron of change: calling on Ghanaians to collaborate to refine the inhibitions within their culture for progress and seeing such inhibiting cultural practices like witchcraft and culturally-induced violence against women under public scrutiny.
It is, therefore, not a messy and dangerous experiment that Boafo is appropriating Ghanas democratic and global values, with its growing openness, to challenge Ghanaians to think about their long-suppressed culture for progress.
Boafo is a hero for what he would not do in fact couldnt do without tearing some aspects of the Ghanaian culture for the future.
Boafo has been a powerful symbolic presence in Ghanas imagination since he first occupied the Chieftaincy and Culture Affairs Ministry in 2006.
With remarkable imagination and daring, Boafo has embarked on a path that is perhaps now irreversible, thats shaping Ghana - a Royal College of Chiefs is on the table to bring traditional rulers openly into modern governance as a compliment of the central government; this contrast sharply with the late President Kwame Nkrumahs harsh marginalization of the chieftaincy institution in the 1960s and its subsequent negative impact on progress.
Boafo is trying to transform a system that has no regard for its own foundational traditional values, for obvious historical reasons, but also inherently thinks its culture is no good for its progress.
Boafo has been attempting to overturn the old and poorly thought-out way for a new Ghana, altering the relationship of Ghana with its development process and changing the nature of the nation-state itself.
As the Greek thinker Plato would say, Boafo is helping Ghanaians to understand and known themselves in the global development process.
With emerging thinkers such as George Ayittey, Courage Quashigah, Bernard Guri and Kofi Akosah-Sarpong, Boafo is attempting to open new vistas, demolish certain old inhibiting thinking embedded in the culture, and replace them by challenging Ghanaians to refine the inhibiting aspects and appropriate the good parts for progress.
Sampson Boafo is Kwame Nkrumah, Thebo Mbeki and Sekou Toure of African Renaissance all wrapped in one, helping to change the metaphysics of the development process.
Boafo has a way of letting Ghanaians, most of them do not think about their traditional values in their larger development process, see and understand the significance and virtues of their traditional values in their progress, as the Southeast Asians have done.
Much more than that, whether by accident or providence, Boafo is a visionary playing complex and contradictory roles.
Boafo is simultaneously Okomfo Anokye and Kwame Nkrumah, the ruling National Patriotic Party apparatchik as J.