At the Crossroads of Memory and Nationhood: Sekyi-Otu pays tribute to F. L. Bartels at book launch

Renowned political philosopher and Mfantsipim alumnus, Professor Ato Sekyi-Otu, delivered a tribute during the launch of the final book by F. L. Bartels, the legendary former headmaster of Mfantsipim School.

Addressing an audience steeped in the legacy of Kwabotwe, Sekyi-Otu’s remarks transcended mere nostalgia, offering instead a profound meditation on national purpose, educational ideals, and the enduring moral vision embodied by Bartels.

Reflecting on his time as Head Prefect appointed by Bartels and invoking powerful parallels between past ideals and present disillusionment, Sekyi-Otu challenged the audience to reimagine Ghana’s postcolonial destiny through the lens of civic responsibility, meritocracy, and critical self-renewal.

With poetic depth and philosophical clarity, he argued that Mfantsipim was never meant to serve tribal interest but to nurture the “soul of the people,” positioning the school—and by extension, the nation—as stewards of a common good rooted in invention, justice, and inclusive progress.

His address, both elegiac and urgent, called upon Ghanaians to return to the foundational values of shared nationhood and to embrace the daunting privilege of being, in Bartels’ words, a “new being” among earthlings—a people not condemned by history, but tasked with its imaginative reconstruction.

Below is the full remark.

Ato Sekyi-Otu is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Social Science and the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought at York University. He was born at Saltpond in 1941 and educated at Mfantsipim School from 1955 to 1961, serving as Head Prefect in 1960-1961.

After Kwabotwe, he went to Harvard, where he obtained an A.B. in Government in 1966. He subsequently studied at the University of Toronto, from which he received a PhD in political theory. For thirty years of his life, his official name was Daniel Sackey Walker, until he decided to drop that exotic designation, consign it to the brand of imported beverages, and repossess his father’s Fantse name.

He is the author of Fanon’s Dialectic of Experience (Harvard University Press, 1996), Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays (Routledge, 2019), and Homestead, Homeland, Home: Critical Reflections (Daraja Press, 2023). He has been married to Mansa Sekyi-Otu for sixty years and is the father of two daughters and three sons.  

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