Iddi
Muhayu-Deen writes...
The
hypocrisy
You have reduced the significance of the founder of
your party, former President Rawlings to ground zero. You say he is a nobody.
You say he is too weak to command any influence in the party. You say he is a barking dog so you decided to cage him
in perpetual oblivion. That is how you are treating the founder of your party.
That is how you are treating the man, whose sacrifices, sweat and blood gave
birth to the political entity called NDC, the party you claim to support today.
That is how you are treating the founder of your party.
Of course, there is absolutely no ambiguity about his
founder status because your own constitution recognizes him as such. You also
agree with me that you cannot love the NDC more than him, seeing how he
"killed himself" to give birth to the party and nurtured it. But you
give no damn to that. You treat him with so much disdain. You have tried every
possible means to obliterate his records in your party and country. That is how
treacherous you have become. That is how legendary your ingratitude has reached.
That is how horrendous and repugnant you are treating the founder of your very
party, who is still alive and kicking.
The
Nkrumah bit
Yet, today, you are all over the place, celebrating
the founder of another party, Kwame Nkrumah of the CPP, who died several
decades ago. You say, till date, he is the greatest Ghanaian and the greatest
African that ever lived. You say he did no wrong. You say he fought and got us Independence from the British. You say
he is the sole founder of Ghana. You have associated everything that is positive in
Ghana and Africa to Nkrumah. Perhaps the only thing you haven't said about
Nkrumah is to liken him to God, because you fear thunder would strike you dead
if you did that.
But are all these things being said about Nkrumah
really true? Have we been told only one side of Ghana's history, with
deliberate distortions and exaggerations relative to Nkrumah's role in our
independence struggle in order to project him far ahead of his compatriots? My
simple answer to these questions is an emphatic
YES and I would proceed to adduce some further and better particulars to
vindicate my position in this raging debate which doesn't appear to have any
terminal point. I have restrained myself enough from talking about Nkrumah's
negatives. I am therefore doing this very reluctantly because of the respect I
have for some of my Nkrumaist friends and mentors. But I have to do it anyway
and damn the fallouts. I have to free my conscience.
To start with, I wish to make the point that, as a
student of history and ardent follower of Ghana's democratic evolution, I have
read a lot and attended several lectures on this subject. I have also keenly
followed the famous 'independence documentary" compiled by a celebrated
Ghanaian ace broadcaster, Paul Adom-Otchere, which tells the untold story of our
independence struggle including the leading role played by the likes of J.B.
Danquah and other members of the UGCC. I am therefore speaking from an informed position, so to say.
In this narrative, I would be focusing more on J.B.
Danquah, the man described as the doyen
of Gold Coast politics by the famous Watson Commission of Inquiry into the
1948 riots because I think that he is one person that our historians haven't
been fair to at all. Very little has been said about him in our history books
even though, his contribution to our independence struggle, is almost unrivaled. In case you didn't know, J.B.
Danquah was one of the persons that discovered Dr. Kwame Nkrumah after he [J.B
Danquah] and his coequals had laid a rock-solid foundation in relation to the
struggle for independence including the formation of the almighty UGCC, the
first political party in the country, which set the pace for our takeoff.
In other words, Nkrumah came into the picture at the
time some 80 to 85% of the job had already been done. Again, it was J.B.
Danquah that suggested to Nkrumah to rename the then Gold Coast as Ghana at the time of independence. Also,
J.B. Danquah played a leading role in the establishment of the nation's premier
University, UG. He is also the founder of the West Africa Times, the first
daily newspaper in Ghana. What more can one offer to his country? What you just
read is less than 9% of J.B. Danquah's achievements for Ghana. I cannot finish
telling the enviable ‘Danquah story’ because I will need not less than 100,000
pages. But suffice it to say with heavy heart that, his story ended very sadly.
This illustrious son of our land and arguably, the
greatest Ghanaian that ever lived [J.B. Danquah], was virtually
"murdered"; by who? Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the very man whom, he [J.B.
Danquah] discovered and nurtured. This was what happened. When President
Nkrumah perceived that J.B. Danquah's rising popularity was becoming a threat to
his continues stay in office, he ordered for his arrest and locked him in jail
for life against his fundamental human rights. He wasn't taken to court for
trial because Nkrumah himself knew that Danquah did nothing wrong to warrant
such capricious use of State power and incumbency.
Nkrumah ensured that Danquah died and rotted in jail.
He didn’t also allow a State burial to be observed in honour of this great
Statesman of all-time until after his [Nkrumah’s] overthrow. This is certainly
the apogee of insensitivity, treachery and ingratitude exhibited by Nkrumah.
Follow this link and read J.B. Danquah's letter to Nkrumah from prison and you
will cry like you've lost your mum and wife/husband in a car crash: http://citifmonline.com/…/j-b-danquahs-letter-to-kwame-nkr…/
.
Nkrumah
and the UGCC
In the cause of the independence struggle which was
spearheaded by J.B. Danquah's UGCC, Nkrumah at some point, had issues with the leadership of the party
because he felt that the quest for independence needed so much vehemence and must
be immediate (now) rather than in the shorted possible time, which was
the belief of the UGCC leadership. In view of this little disagreement, Nkrumah
broke away from the UGCC and formed his own party, the CPP.
[
Now, watch this, after all the talk about wanting
Independence NOW rather than in the shortest possible time, it took
the nation (Gold Coast) more than 8 years to realize this independence. So I
ask, if somebody told you, he would give you something NOW and it took the person 8 years before doing that, would you say
the person has fulfilled his promise? Wouldn't that rather qualify more as ‘shortest possible time’ instead of NOW? Well, I leave that for you to
judge...
The
other ills of Nkrumah
Upon attaining independence, the British government
gave Ghana, several millions of pounds sterling as a reparation package to help in the country’s rebuilding efforts. The
money was significant enough to have turned the fortunes of this country. But
that didn't happen because it wasn’t used for its intended purpose. Nkrumah
chose to use a chunk of that money to pursue his agenda of Pan-Africanism, so that, he would lead the entire Continent. He
wanted to be President of Africa. And
so, he used our money to put up a number of developmental structures with huge
investments in other African countries to help his bid. That's how Nkrumah
became very popular on the Continent of Africa and not because of any
extraordinary thing he did. In other words, he used our money to pursue his
parochial and egoistic agenda.
Indications are that, if Nkrumah had invested all of
that money in Ghana, our country would have been perhaps more developed than
South Africa. And as if he hasn't done enough disservice to this country
already, President Nkrumah also wanted to rule Ghana as President for life. So
in 1964, he changed the country's Constitution and made Ghana a one party State (with his CPP). He also
passed a law to ban people from criticizing his style of leadership. If you
criticized Nkrumah, you would be arrested, imprisoned without trial and if you were
not lucky, you would be killed or beaten to pulp. He wasn't accountable to
anybody and nobody could challenge him. Nkrumah was more than a tyrant and a
notorious dictator, having succeeded in cowing everybody into absolute submission.
Democracy was alien to him and the culture of silence was his pride.
I am not surprised that his political party, the CPP,
"died" the very day he died. Today, Nkrumah's number one legacy, the
almighty CPP, is struggling to make 1% of total valid votes in general
elections. Whereas J.B. Danquah's political tradition, which is now called,
NPP, consistently obtains more than 48%. In the 2016 elections for instance, the
NPP secured more than 53% (precisely, 53.8%) of the votes, whereas Nkrumah's
CPP managed to poll less than 1% (precisely 0.2%). Such a disgraceful
performance! That is how unpopular anything Nkrumah has become in present day
Ghana.
And
you want me to celebrate him as the sole
founder of Ghana? Your gods must really be crazy. In any case, our history
doesn't suggest that Ghana has a sole founder but founders or if you like,
founding fathers. The NDC government's decision to institute a founder's day (in honour of Nkrumah
alone) rather than founders' day, is
surely a blot on the conscience of our historians. It was purely a political
decision meant to spite the admirers of J.B. Danquah and other founding fathers
of Ghana and that is grossly unfair to their memories.
Well, I would on any day, choose J.B. Danquah over
Nkrumah and that is me. I also think that Nkrumah has been celebrated enough in
this country. The choice of 21st September, which is Nkrumah's birthday as
"founder's day", is enough honour for Nkrumah. Let's celebrate others
too. Let's begin by bringing the apostrophe after the "s" to make it founders’ day but maintain the 21st
September to show among other things that, Nkrumah was the President at the
time of independence. I would be highly disappointed in President Akufo-Addo if
he left office without taking steps to give J.B. Danquah and others, their
rightful position in the history of Ghana’s independence. The thoughts of a
student of history and a citizen not a
spectator.
Assalamu alaikum
Iddi
Muhayu-Deen
Free to
share….
What you have typed shows your ignoramus nature. I will write a rejoinder to this very soon.
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