TITLE:
Naam Making in Dagbon and the Legitimation of Traditional Authority
AUTHORS:
Alhassan Sulemana Anamzoya, Joshua Gariba
KEYWORDS:
Chieftaincy, Naa, Naam Making, Investiture, Authority, Legitimation
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.10 No.12,
November
30,
2022
ABSTRACT: This
paper focuses on the “naam” making processes—or the installation of chiefs and the investiture
of the king—which has been
neglected by scholars writing about the Dagbon chieftaincy in the Northern
Region of Ghana. Rather, scholars have paid attention to the internal
chieftaincy disputes that have bedeviled the kingdom for about a century now.
Using content analysis and in-depth interviews with selected chiefs, their
elders, kingmakers, and drum historians of the Dagomba in the Northern region
of Ghana, this paper provides an analysis of king making as well as chief
making process. The paper argues that whilst chieftaincy as an institution
could be sociologically considered non-rational, successful “naam” making legitimates the chieftaincy institution
enabling its actors (the chiefs) to interact with modern state institutions.