The Ada Traditional Council (ATC) has lifted the ban it placed on Radio Ada which stopped the country’s premier community radio station from covering the annual Asafotufiami Festival of the people of Ada.

The council’s spokesperson and chairman of the Asafotufiami Festival Planning Committee, Nene Agudey Obichere III, announced the decision to lift the ban at a meeting of the ATC on July 22, 2024.

Radio Ada was banned in 2022, prohibiting coverage of the Asafotufiami Festival. This was after the station had reported extensively on a salt mining concession granted to Electrochem Ghana Limited — a deeply divisive subject that is currently before the courts. Though the radio station was in operation and covering other events, the ban prevented it from covering the prestigious Asafotufiami Festival for two years.

Nene Obichere III says the lifting of the ban is a reconciliatory gesture, emphasising the festival’s objective of healing and unity.

“Things cannot go on forever,” he told The Fourth Estate. “Radio Ada is back. We are happy they are back. Nobody was happy about that decision. Now it is time to [review] that decision and it has been done.”

Also at the meeting where the decision was announced were four influential traditional priests who are custodians of the Songhor Lagoon and other influential traditional power brokers, who had abstained from the festival in the last two years due to the controversies surrounding the Songhor Lagoon concession.

The priests perform an important role before, during and after the festival by pouring libation and performing other rituals. They boycotted their traditional roles and sided with those who have been challenging the Electrochem lease. The situation escalated on January 13, 2022, when armed men attacked Radio Ada’s premises, beat staff and vandalised equipment, an incident linked to their reportage on the lease agreement.

Radio Ada, MFWA react

Meanwhile, Radio Ada has welcomed the decision to lift the ban and allow them to cover the Asafotufiami Festival. The station’s Programme Officer, Gideon Amanor Dzeagu, expressed gratitude to the traditional authorities and reaffirmed the station’s commitment to community development and its watchdog role as enshrined in Ghana’s 1992 constitution.

“We are humans, and they are our fathers,” he told The Fourth Estate. “If they say we have wronged them and called to engage us to resolve it amicably, then we will use the platform to ask for their forgiveness. We are always ready to collaborate with them and serve the people as their mouthpiece, as we used to do,” he added.

The Media Foundation for West Africa has also applauded the decision.

“We hope this will mark the beginning of a new era of cooperation between the radio station and the traditional authorities in the interest of the development of the area,” the MFWA’s Manager for Freedom of Expression, Muheeb Saeed, said.

Dzigbordi Osabutey, a market woman and an ardent listener of Radio Ada, expressed excitement about the decision to lift the ban on the station.

She said as the community prepares for the 2024 Asafotufiami Festival, the reintegration of Radio Ada symbolises a step towards healing and fostering collaboration for the development of the Ada Traditional Area.

“For sometime now, if you don’t go to the festival, you won’t know what happened or how it went.

“You won’t even know there is festival unless you go there. We can’t do anything without Radio Ada, so we are very happy that they are back to do what they know how to do very well,” she said and added that the Radio Ada ban had taken a lot away from the festival.

The Asafotufiami Festival is a major cultural event in the Ada Traditional Area. It commemorates ancient wars and serves as a homecoming celebration for the Ada diaspora.

The ‘Asafotu’ are groups of warriors who fire their muskets and hoot at their enemies in celebration.

For decades, Radio Ada has played a pivotal role in broadcasting the festival’s activities since the station’s inception in 1998, making its exclusion in 2022 a significant issue.

In August 2022, The Fourth Estate reported that the Ada Traditional Council had barred Radio Ada from covering the Asafotufiami Festival for the use of “unrefined language.”

Following the publication, the Ghana Journalists Association, MFWA and other pro-media institutions after a fact-finding mission to Ada, described the ATC’s decision as an affront to media freedom.

Background of the ban

The tension between the ATC and Radio Ada began when the radio station, known for its critical coverage of local issues, notably the Songhor Lagoon lease agreement, was omitted from the media list invited to cover the 85th edition of the festival in 2022.

Despite Radio Ada’s efforts to rectify what it initially perceived as an oversight; the ATC confirmed that their exclusion was intentional.

In a letter dated August 1, 2022, the ATC placed restrictions on Radio Ada, prohibited the station from setting up a stage at the festival grounds and barred interviews with traditional leaders.