What an extraordinary people we are – rooting for people who were not only elitists and Akan tribal-supremacists, but were also quislings who worked hard as stooges for neocolonialism and were lackeys of Western interests in our nation. What primary schoolchild in the Ghana of today does not know that Dr. J.B. Danquah was on the payroll of America’s C.I.A.?
It shows the orientation and caliber of some of the members of our political class that they can even accept that those quislings, who wanted our nation to be handed over to them after independence, so that the progeny of the ruling elites of our pre-colonial feudal past would succeed in dominating Ghanaian society and our country till kingdom come, should share the honour of being regarded as Ghana’s founding-fathers, with Nkrumah. What perfidy!
Who in Ghana does not know that the phrase a “property-owning democracy” encapsulated perfectly the elitist mindset of the J.B.Danquah’s – who coined it when they wanted to create a nation in which only property-owners and those who earned a regular salary would have the right to vote in elections?
Was it not the far-sighted Nkrumah who insisted that all Ghanaians, irrespective of their station in life, ought to have the right to vote in elections in our country? Hopefully, at least the Alban Bagbins of this world will acknowledge that it is thanks to Nkrumah, that we have universal adult suffrage underpinning our electoral system - something that has lasted to this very era, incidentally: and which we all take for granted now.
Perhaps the Honourable Bagbin and Co. do not also know that Dr. Danquah (ditto most of his acolytes) so despised northerners and non-Akans that he airily dismissed Nkrumah’s CPP regime as a regime made up of “Ntafuo” and “Veranda boys”? Do they know how he and Nana Ofori Atta1 tyrannized non-Akans living in Akim Abuakwa – and were dictatorial in their attitude, generally, within the Akim Abaukwa area?
Did they not see how in the eight short years President Kufuor, a political descendant of Dr. J.B. Danquah, and an Akan tribal-supremacist par excellence himself, wielded power in Ghana, he worked extremely hard (in alliance with some of his megalomaniac tribal-supremacist traditional rulers) to divide our nation along ethnic lines as never before in our nation’s 52-year history?
It is an indisputable fact that Dr. Nkrumah was the founding father of our nation and a man who above all, sought to unite a people of diverse-ethnicity into a united and modern African nation-state – and President Mills is perfectly right to designate his birthday as Founder’s Day. Period. Who ever heard of any nation with a colonial past and a proud people (with abundant self-belief as pan-Africanists), honouring the stooges for neocolonialism and eager lackeys of Western imperialism from their country’s early history of its struggle against colonialism as national heroes and heroines?
We must end this nonsense on bamboo stilts argument and give Nkrumah his due. Nkrumah dwarfed all his contemporaries, and towered above them as a major historical figure. That is why he is included by all historians in the Pantheon of the 20th Century’s greatest historical figures.
He was on the right side of history – and understood (unlike the J.B.Danquahs) clearly that our national interest did not coincide with that of the neocolonialist and imperialist powers – and that it never would throughout our history, going forward.
That is why he will be remembered till the very end of time by every generation of black Africans worldwide – as the man of vision who founded Ghana, the star of Africa: long after the Alban Bagbins of this world have sunk into oblivion and been forgotten. Kwame Nkrumah’s equal has not yet been born. Period.
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1 comment:
Indeed!
But I do hope that his equal has been born. We need all the help we can get.
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