We are taking our readers down memory lane today as we read about Kobena Sekyi.
He was the first lawyer in the British Colony of Gold Coast and before he became a lawyer, he vowed never to wear European clothes.
He was born on 1 November 1892 in Cape Coast and he was educated at Mfantsipim School and studied philosophy at the University of London and he was accompanied to Britain by his maternal grandfather.
We also gathered that he was a Mfantsipim boy extraordinaire and to our surprise, he was of one of the faithful eights in the school’s history.
The history about the FAITHFUL EIGHT was that in 1907, Reverend W. T. Balmer arrived at Mfantsipim on a mission to inspect the states of colleges and collegiates around West Africa at the time.
On his arrival at Mfantsipim it seemed, for some reason, he had to stay. To his surprise, he only met eight boys in the entire school, with neither a teacher nor a headmaster, the then headmaster having left for the United Kingdom. Balmer named them the “Faithful Eight” and one of those boys was Kobena Sekyi. A monument has been erected in-between the Administration Block and the Assembly Hall to perpetuate their memory.
His comedy, The Blinkards (1915) satirized the acceptance by a colonized society of the attitudes of the colonizers. His novel, The Anglo-Fante was the first English-language novel written in the Cape Coast.
Kobena Sekyi was popular as the first educated elite appearing in a colonial court in Ghanaian cloth as a lawyer. He died in Cape Coast, on 20 June 1956.
Source: www.ghgossip.com
