Oklemekuku Azzu Mate Kole II was enstooled Konor of Manya Krobo on 22 June 1939 at the age of twenty-nine to succeed his late father who had just passed away.
Mate Kole was then a police officer stationed at Mampong Akwapim. As chief, Mate Kole played a leading role in the socioeconomic development of the Manya Krobo Traditional Area.
The officer facing the venerable monarch is called Inspector J.B. Sackitey; he was the head of the Native Administration Police. Odumase-Krobo, Ghana.1945 @leyla
As chieftain, he was instrumental in the establishment of Manya Krobo Secondary School (MAKROSEC) as replacement of the Presbyterian Boys’ Secondary School (PRESEC) which had been relocated in 1968 from Odumase-Krobo to its current Legon campus at Accra.
As a member of the Government’s Central Advisory Committee on Education, he operationalized its recommendations which led to the establishment of fifteen Akro State Schools in several villages in Kroboland.
He was aided by R. P Djabanor.
The Akro State Schools later became the Asesewa Senior High School in the Upper Manya Krobo District and the Akro Senior High School in Odumase Lower Manya Krobo Municipality.
The other schools in the Akro State system were absorbed into the public system as government-assisted institutions.
As a progressive chief, he also championed girl-child education in 1950s and 1960s when there were huge disparities in female enrollment in schools due to cultural factors. He also established a state scholarship scheme for students from the Manya Krobo district.
As an advocate of formal education and communal self-help, he organised the administrative state machinery and established the stool treasury which became the revenue collection system for Manya Krobo.
Within three years, it was recorded revenues had increased threefold. With increased revenue, the traditional state set up and ran its own transport services. More than twenty-five wells were dug at multiple locations in the town.
This foresight helped town avert a crisis during an acute water shortage in 1947.
Manya Krobo became a notable agricultural centre during Mate Kole’s reign. He spearheaded the construction of bridges and feeder roads to link surrounding farming, production and principal market centres such as Abuachau, Akateng, Akotue, Asesewa, Ehiamekyene, Osonson, Sekesua, Sisiamang, Sutapong.
His efforts led to an appreciable increase in revenue from market tolls, farm size, tonnage of food crops assembled at the market centres.
He enlisted the Army Field Engineers of the Gold Coast to construct bridges across the Akrum River at Abuachau and Mlegedu.
The project, which cost £9,500, was paid from the Manya Krobo state treasury.
In conjunction with the Office of the District Commissioner at Akuse, James Moxon, Mate Kole organised an Agricultural Show at Laasi, Odumase-Krobo in 1947.
The expo was the biggest provincial show in that period and was attended by the Governor of the Gold Coast, Sir Alan Burns together with merchants, manufacturers, indigenous and foreign farmers.
In 1976, Nene Azzu Mate Kole II visited Gerlingen in Germany, the hometown of Johannes Zimmermann (1825 –1876), a philologist, linguist and Basel Missionary who translated the Bible into the Ga language and published a grammar book.
Zimmerman had lived in Odumase Krobo during his sojourn in colonial Ghana in the mid-nineteenth century.
Personal life
Nene Azzu Mate Kole II was a member of the District Grand Lodge of Ghana under the United Grand Lodge of England.
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