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| Asanteman’s gold ornaments returned |
10/3/2005 |
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Gold ornaments and regalia including 332 gold weights and 27 gold dusts have been handed over to the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II l at the Manhyia Palace in Kumasi.
A member of the British Colonial Expeditionary Force Lord Baiden Powell took the ornaments away from the Asantehene’s palace in 1896.
The handing over was done by the Chief of Defence Staff, Lieutenant-General Joseph Boateng Danquah at a durbar of the Asanteman Council.
After half a century, precisely in 1951, the wife of Baiden Powell, returned the items to the late Otumfuo Sir Osei Agyemang Prempeh II, who instructed that they be kept at the Kumasi Fort for safekeeping.
In 1987, a team representing the Ghana Armed Forces, led by Brigadier G.N. Guomil, then Two Brigade Commander, sent the items to the Ghana Commercial Bank, Kumasi Main Branch, where they had been kept until now.
Speaking at the handing over ceremony Lieutenant-General Joseph Boateng Danquah, Chief of Defence Staff noted that the return of the items to their rightful owners should serve as an opportunity to reinforce the normal bridge of co-operation, build on the trust already achieved and remove all suspicions that might have existed between the Armed Forces and civil society.
Otumfuo Osei Tutu thanked the government and the Armed Forces for the release of the items and said negotiations for the return of the items started from the tenure of late Otumfuo Opoku Ware II.
He said he would continue to press for the release and return of all Asanteman properties including lands and buildings, which had been confiscated by the State on political grounds.
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