The Ga Dangme Council has indicated that it will not accept attempts to change the origins of Tetteh Quarshie.

The Council is insisting that the historical records confirm Tetteh Quarshie’s roots in Osu, Greater Accra Region, and not Mampong in the Eastern Region.

In a speech delivered at the 67th Independence Day celebration in Koforidua on Wednesday, March 6, President Akufo-Addo acknowledged Tetteh Quarshie as the driving force behind the introduction of cocoa to Ghana, linking his heritage to Mampong Akuapem.

This has provoked the Ga Damgbe Council to caution the presidency against spreading such misinformation.

Nii Ayikoi Otoo, the President of Ga Damgbe Council has criticized the president for switching Tetteh Quarshie’s roots..

“Let us give due where it is appropriate. We have never heard this history before and we don’t know where they are getting it from. Is it the speech writers?” he quizzed in an interview with Citi FM “Even if it is the speech writers, then they should check their history and stop what they are doing.”

“If it is deliberate, then they should stop because we have said that even if people don’t want to respect us, cocoa that has become a cash crop for Ghana was brought by a Ga man and now they are telling us that the man hails from Mampong. We are peeved and the earlier it is stopped, the better.”

About Tetteh Quarshie

Tetteh Quarshie was an agriculturalist in the British Colony of Gold Coast and the person directly responsible for the introduction of cocoa crops to Gold Coast, which today constitute one of the major export crops of the Ghanaian economy, the country Gold Coast became in 1957.

Quarshie traveled to the island of Fernando Po (now Bioko in Equatorial Guinea) in 1870 and returned in 1876 to Ghana to introduce the crop. He died on Christmas Day 1892.

By: Josephine Mepka | Metrotvonline.com | Ghana