For Edina, Elmina Castle’s Unpaid Royalties Are a Historical Debt
What the Edina Traditional Council is demanding”, “A 20% royalty unpaid since 2009”, “The 1873 bombardment of Elmina”, “Nana Kobina Gyan and the exile of the Edinahene”, “Why Brand Elmina calls it a debt, not a favour”, “Turning remembrance into responsibility
What the Edina Traditional Council is demanding
The Edina Traditional Council has again demanded the Elmina Castle royalties it says the Ministry of Tourism owes it, and this time it has attached a warning. If the money is not paid, the council says it may perform traditional rites and invoke the gods of the Elmina land against the castle’s operations. The demand was made in the courtyard of the castle during the commemoration of its 544th anniversary and the relaunch of the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board’s Heritage Dialogue Series.
How much are the Elmina Castle royalties, and since when?
The claim itself is simple. Elmina Castle stands on land belonging to the Edina Traditional Area, and under an arrangement the council says has long been in place, it is entitled to 20 percent of the proceeds from the castle’s management. These Elmina Castle royalties have not been paid since 2009. The Paramount Chief of Edina, His Royal Majesty Nana Kodwo Conduah VI, put the matter directly to the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Abla Dzifa Gomashie. “I am calling on the Minister of Tourism, Hon. Abla Dzifa Gomashie, to address our concerns, or we will be compelled to carry out our threat by performing traditional rituals and invoking the gods of Elmina land against the operations of Elmina Castle in the coming days,” he said.
Nana Conduah VI was careful to add that the council does not want to keep visitors away from the castle. He recalled that during the Kufuor administration the late Minister of Tourism, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, released funds to the council after repeated appeals. Part of that money paid school fees for needy but brilliant students, and part supported community projects. After that administration the payments stopped, and they have not resumed since.
The 1873 bombardment of Elmina
To understand why the council speaks with such weight, it helps to recall what this castle has already cost Edina. On 13 June 1873, British warships bombarded Elmina and destroyed the ancestral town beside the castle, which was for a time effectively wiped from the map. The events that led to it began with the Edinahene, Nana Kobina Gyan I, who refused to accept the transfer of the castle from the Dutch to the British and refused to swear allegiance to the British Crown. His words at the time were recorded plainly: “On account of the hoisting of the English flag of the castle of Elmina the people have brought me great trouble. They have disgraced me.” For that refusal he was arrested and, on 30 April 1873, exiled to Sierra Leone without trial. His exile lasted 21 years.
Nana Kobina Gyan and the exile of the Edinahene
That history still lives in the customary law of the town. Two of the great oaths (Ntam) of Edinaman come directly from these events: Nana Kobina Gyan Ne enisua, the tears of the king, remembered from the day of his arrest and exile, and Edinaman Bo, the bombardment of Edina. In this tradition an oath is not a figure of speech. It binds those who swear it to the event it names.
Why Brand Elmina calls it a debt, not a favour
This is why Brand Elmina holds that the Elmina Castle royalties should not rest on the Paramount Chief having to ask at all. A town that was bombarded and depopulated because of this castle, and whose king was exiled for defending it, has a claim that goes well beyond a management contract. Paying Edina its share is not a favour to be offered when convenient. It is a measure of compensation, and the government and the Ministry of Tourism should treat it as due diligence rather than wait to be pressed.
There is a practical case as well. In most development situations, when a community sees no direct benefit from a project on its land, it takes little interest in maintaining it. Heritage is no different. If Edina shares fairly in what the castle earns, the town has a real stake in keeping it in good condition. Where the host community is cut out, upkeep and goodwill both suffer.
Turning remembrance into responsibility
The anniversary was not only about the dispute. In his keynote, the historian Professor Anthony Annan-Prah examined how the forts and castles built by Europeans along the coast changed the communities around them, altering their beliefs, the names of their towns and the way they traded. He urged Ghanaians to confront that history honestly and to forgive it, without letting its lessons slip. Clifford Mensah, the Central Regional Director of the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, asked that remembrance be turned into practical responsibility, and that sites like Elmina Castle be preserved as places of learning for the students of Edinaman Senior High and the generations after them.
The dispute will most likely be settled through negotiation rather than ritual. But the council has stated its position clearly, and it deserves a serious response. The Elmina Castle royalties are one thread in a larger relationship between a heritage site and its host community. The town that has lived beside the castle, and suffered for it, is asking only for the share it was promised.
Source: Nana Kobina Gyan I’s statement is preserved in the records of Hendrik Vroom, the Euro-African official present at the 1872 handover of Elmina Castle from the Dutch to the British.