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Colonial Policy Chieftaincy and Land Dispute in Ghana: The Case of the Atebubu and Amantin Traditional Kingdoms.

DOI: 10.18535/ijsrm/v14i04.sh01· Pages: 2677-2687· Vol. 14, No. 04, (2026)· Published: April 12, 2026
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Abstract

Abstract Atebubu was a west African traditional kingdom located in modern Ghana. It was carved out by some Guan fugitives from the Gonja kingdom led by three brothers by the names of Atta Kofi, Atta Bodae and Kata Gyan probably in the 16th century. The three established a centralized government whose first king was Atta Kofi; hence, the stool, a symbol of kingship authority was christened the Atta Kofi Stool. At the peak of its political power, it shared boundaries with Mampon, Nkoranza, Kumawu, Yeji and Krachi traditional kingdoms. Atebubu became a theater of influx of migrants notably, the Agona people from Saaman, the Trohwe and the Kenyasi fugitives. The Kenyasi fugitives are today referred to as the Amantin people. The Saaman group were led into the Atebubu country by Ohemaa (Queen)Yaa Tua who was accompanied by Donyina, her daughter and a few retinues of followers. Originally, all the settler migrants mentioned above owed allegiance to the occupant of the Atta Kofi Stool. But the British colonizers vested power in the hands of the Saaman group of which leader by the name of Owusu Asare, the son of Ohemaa Donyina became the first king of Atebubu to be recognized by the British colonizers. This occurred when Owusu Asare substituted the occupant of the Atta Kofi Stool and signed a treaty of protection and trade with the British in 1890. Similar treaties of protection were signed by the British with the kings of Wiase and Amantin which previously served Atebubu. In the early fifties, Wiase and Amantin initiated a bid to assert their sovereignty and identity in order to attract public goods to their traditional kingdoms during the period of the local government reorganization. This initiative generated constitutional and land dispute between Amantin and its Atebubu overlords. The latter claimed the total stretch of land on which the Amantin province was located while the Amantin people argued to have acquired the land by conquest. The land related rift which started in the early fifties reached its zenith when the Stool Land Boundary Commission of the Republic of Ghana intervened following the Kumasi High Court referral of the case to it in 1974. The Commission started its investigation in 1984 and ruled in favour of Amantin. But the Commission’s decision has not been challenged since 1984. This work traces the historical trajectory of the case by relating the origin of the Atebubu kingdom, and showing how it accommodated various immigrants. The work also discusses how the British colonial policy created a pattern of unnatural allegiance to the Owusu Asare stool of Atebubu. Attempt made by the Amantin people to break the unnatural allegiance to Atebubu resulted in constitutional and land disputes which is the focal subject matter of this work. The researcher gathered information from both primary and secondary sources. Data were sourced from the Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRRAD) in Accra and Sunyani. Oral traditions were also sourced from knowledgeable informants. These sources mentioned supra were supplemented by a few secondary sources

Keywords

ColonialismChieftaincyConstitutionLand DisputeAtebubuAmantin

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Author details
Joseph Kwadwo Agyemang
Department of History and Political Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi
✉ Corresponding Author
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