Felix Baidoo

Christian Village(s): Ghana’s Community of Slave Descendants 1. Nestled between the thickets of Achimota Forest and the Golf Hills on the fringes of Dome are surviving remnants and physical reminders of Ghana’s ugly past with domestic and transatlantic slavery. 2. As the story goes, in the post-abolition period in colonial Ghana (after 1874), Nana Amoako Atta of the Ofori-Panyin stool of Akyem Abuakwa (from the same maternal line & royal house as Nana Ofori-Atta I, maternal grandfather of Nana Akufo-Addo) and Nana Kwasi Akuffo of Akwapim Akropong continued the illegal trade. 3. On 17th March 1880, he was charged by the British colonial government with conniving in the purchasing, selling, and pawning of human beings, as well as misgovernment. 4. The Swiss German Basel missionary, Eisenschmid, reports that while some of his European missionary colleagues condoned and even partook in the illicit trade alongside these chiefs, there was a strong consensus within the Mission to pay off the debts on the heads of these slaves, free them, and convert them to Christianity. 5. And so, it came to be that many slaves in the Akwapim and Akyem areas, originally brought from the northern regions of present-day Ghana, were freed on the condition that they gave their lives to Christ. 6. Once freed, they had the choice to remain in Akyem or Akwapim. 7. The children of those who stayed were enrolled in Basel Mission boarding schools; some even had the sons of their former masters as classmates and co-equals. 8. Many chose instead to live far away from the tyranny and enslavement of Amoako Atta and Kwasi Akuffo. 9. A significant number were resettled in new villages established by the Basel Mission on Gã lands purchased from Nii Tackie Tawiah. 10.Christian Village near Legon, Apenkwa, Abokobi, and Anumle, in Achimota, became safe havens for these freed people. 11. Later, some of these freed persons of Northern Ghanaian origin were among the early recruits of the country's budding police force in the Gold Coast(Hausa)Constabulary. 12.With each recruit, the Basel Mission was handsomely compensated by the British colonial administration. 13. With the exit of the Basel Mission from Ghana, huge tracts of Gã land in the Abokobi area came into the ownership of these ex-slaves of Northern extraction—a small, yet deserving, claim to reparations.