There is no tribe in Ghana called ‘Ashanti’ – Manasseh schools Sonnie Badu

Ghanaian gospel artiste based in the United Kingdom, Sonnie Badu on Friday, September 9, shared a photo of himself wearing a colourful kente cloth to represent the rich culture and tradition of his region.

In the Facebook post that has generated over 740 comments, his fans showered him with compliments for selling Ghana to the world.

The image was captioned: “Proud Ghanaian… proud African…proud Ashanti.#Kente.”

Ghanaian journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni reacting to the post, corrected the singer on the wrong spelling of ‘Asante’ which was misspelt as ‘Ashanti’.

According to him, many locals get confused with the right spelling by replacing the last letter of Asante with the alphabet ‘i’. He added that it was adulterated by the white man.

He, however, complimented Sonnie for his choice of outfit for the wedding he recently attended.

“This is beautiful, but for your information, there is no ethnic group in Ghana called Ashanti. The right name is Asante. The traditional ruler of the Asante people is Asantehene and they speak Asante Twi. The Asante people refer to their kingdom as Asanteman. A singular Asante is called Asanteni and we refer to them as Asantefuo. So, you are an Asante, not Ashanti.

He further explained that: “The “Ashanti” in our books is the white man’s adulteration of Asante, which is still being used to identify the administrative region of the Asante people. I wonder why we cannot just change it to Asante Region, instead of keeping the “Ashanti” Region. It’s just like Kibi (Kyebi) and Akim (Akyem) which are still on some names of schools and towns. And many will be surprised to know that there is no ethnic group called Dagaati. Maybe, we have to make a conscious effort to return to the right names.”