A lawyer for Bawku Naba, Maxwell Agbambilla has described the enskinment of the chief by the Nayiri as modern-day slavery.

The legal practitioner explained that it was unacceptable for a group of people to be forced to accept a ruler who is enskinned by a group with whom they do not speak the same language.

“Is it his case that today, if the Zebilla … skin is vacant, the Zebilla chief should go to Bawku with an interpreter to be enskinned as a Bawku Naba, and he doesn’t see that that is colonialism or apartheid?

“…How is it that in this present-day democracy, that I should be forced to go to somebody, whose language I do not speak to be enskinned as a chief and to be controlled and ordered about by him?” he stressed.

Speaking on Newsfile on Saturday, Mr Agbambilla asserted that it was unlawful and an offence for someone to be enskinned as the chief of a town to which they did not belong.

He emphasised that should the occurrence above occur, there may be a chance for conflict between the two ethnic groups.

“There’s an offence called breaches of the chiefs. If I get up and go to Kumasi because there’s a Kusasi community in Kumasi, I mass up my people, get people to come to Bawku and say I am going to be the Ashantehene knowing fully well that what I am going to do is likely going to provoke Ashantis to react, is that not criminal”, he said.

Mr Agbambilla’s statement was in response to the Mamprusi representative on the Bawku Inter-ethnic Peace Committee, Mohammed Tahiru Nambe, who had earlier approved the enskinment of the new Bawku Naba as legitimate.

Mr Nambe further said that Bawku was a Mamprusis community and that the Nayiri's enskinning a new chief was simply the Nayiri exercising his authority.

However, Mr Agbambilla disagreed with the Mamprusi representative’s assertion and contended that Mr Nambe's tale reflected colonialism and apartheid.

The lawyer for Bawku Naba, therefore, insisted that “As far as we are concerned as Kusasis, we are not willing to go to anybody with an interpreter to be enskinned.”