DR SEKOU NKRUMAH'S ABSENCE FROM AU HQ CEREMONY HONOURING PRESIDENT NKRUMAH - IS KOKU ANYIDOHO DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE?

News that Dr. Francis Nkrumah and Ms. Samiah Yaaba Nkrumah are accompanying President Mills to the latest AU summit, illustrates perfectly, how over the years, Mills' image has been damaged by daft decisions of the incompetents that surround him.

Although the professional dissemblers in the Osu Castle will deny it, I am one hundred percent certain that the politically inept decision not to invite Dr. Sekou Nkrumah to accompany the president, was not taken by President Mills personally - and that the president was not also involved in arriving at that short-sighted and foolish decision.

Yet, it is the president's image that has suffered yet another blow - because the incompetents around him, who frequently say and do things in his name that he has no knowledge of, have struck yet again.

I am no fan of Dr. Sekou Nkrumah's - but he is an offspring of President Nkrumah's: which is the precise reason which qualified Dr Francis Nkrumah and Ms Samiah Nkrumah to accompany President Mills to unveil a statute of their late father in the forecourt of the new AU headquarters building in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.

Instead of making endless excuses, Koku Anyidoho - who the uncharitable amongst us often say wouldn't qualify to be in charge of communications in even the smallest American town's mayor's office, let alone the White House - ought to quickly arrange to enable Sekou Nkrumah to be present at the AU HQ ceremony to honour his late father.

For the information of those "abject failures" (to quote a wag I know!) in the Osu Castle communications team - in case it escapes those geniuses - Dr. Sekou Nkrumah's absence from photographs of the occasion, will be a permanent reminder, for posterity, of their pettiness, short-sightedness and incompetence.


Above all, it will unfairly be a permanent dent on the image of a president, who had no hand in arriving at that incomprehensible decision to exclude Sekou Nkrumah, who as it happens, is coincidentally the most critical of the president and his administration, amongst Nkrumah's offspring resident in Ghana. What does that fact convey - from the standpoint of an independent observer, I ask?

Koku Anyidoho must understand that criticising the president and his administration, isn't committing treason. Indeed there are times when it is an act of patriotism - surprising though it might be for him. And whatever else one might think of Dr. Sekou Nkrumah, his patriotism isn't in doubt.

And is this particular trip with President Mills, by Nkrumah's offspring, not meant to be a national assignment - as goodwill ambassadors breathing new life into, and renewing, the old ties President Nkrumah built across the continent, between Ghana and the rest of the nations on the continent?

What a perfect photo-opportunity to show how tolerant President Mills is, as an individual, the incompetents in the Osu Castle communications team have just missed. But it is typical of them - and more's the pity for the beleaguered President Mills: whose misfortune it is to be lumbered with such clueless and unhelpful helpers.

Koku Anyidoho must not defend the indefensible - in that crass and petty decision, not to invite Sekou Nkrumah to accompany the president to Addis Ababa.

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