By: Prof Lungu
In Remembrance and Celebration of Kwame Nkrumah's Exemplary Performance on Behalf of Unitary Ghana During 1951 - 24th February, 1966
In 1951, well before independence in 1957, the CPP caretaker government under Kwame Nkrumah created the Accelerated Development Plan for Education (ADPE) to fast-track education for all the people in the then-Gold Coast. The ADPE was further strengthened in 1961, following independence. Vast amounts of funds was spent on education and infrastructure systems that today, in 2017, still constitute the back-bone of education and the SHS system Akufo Addo now proposes to make freer for every Ghanaian without regard to their ability to pay, whether they pay their fair share of taxes or not.
Above, Ghana school enrollment data for you, for the period 1951 (pop ~5,436,555) through 1966 (~7,891,194).
Go around Ghana and name it, and it was most likely built under Kwame Nkrumah!
In fact, just about a week age when it was announced that some students at the Drobo-East Demonstration Primary and Junior High School in the Jaman South-District in the Brong-Ahafo Region were being "forced to study in an abandoned toilet building", a related commentary was that the "toilet facility was built in the 1960’s for Drobo Senior High School". We will bet our bottom cedi that the building was most likely a ADPE facility, one of those the Nonentities, Liars and Crooks, (NLC) that overthrew Kwame Nkrumah did not complete. In the 21st century, that toilet facility has been converted into school.
Now, in 2017, President Akufo Addo wants to give Ghanaians free SHS, free SHS when kindergarten and elementary schools are under trees, rotten, or falling all over. They are talking about free SHS when over 95% of existing schools do not have plumbing or running water to control disease among children and in society. They are talking free SHS for even people like Akufo Addo with some of the highest incomes in the land. Those are the same people who do not pay income taxes on their high incomes in the first place because they have the clutch of a wart-infested Rawlings Constitution.
All of it would still be free to all of them even before the "Free SHS Plan" has been developed with the people, and approved by the people.
SOURCE OF GHANA'S ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT BEGUN IN 1966, (NOT 1957):
Dear reader, by all objective measures, by 1966, by most measures of economic performance, social development, and governance, Ghana was on its way. Ghana was practically at the liftoff stage of industrialization and fast-track social development exactly 51 years ago, today, this February 24th. Then, the Nonentities, Liars and Crooks, (NLC), with the aid and assistance of rascal civilians Komla Gbedemah, Kofi Busia, and the NLM-UP-PP cohorts, swallowed the playbook of the Johnson CIA like rottening fishes without identity, hope, or history.
They overthrew Kwame Nkrumah!
Yes, the arrested development of Ghana occurred exactly 51 years ago, today, (not at independence) when the liftoff stage of Ghana's industrial experiment was crudely aborted, and thus begun the downward spiral of the development of Ghana.
This is a fact!
Do not be fooled by what Akufo Addo, Bawumia, and the rest of the fast-talking politicians who for generations resisted the Unitary Ghana concept, individuals who will have you now believe that it all started coming down for Ghana at independence, in 1957, 60 years ago by their calendar.
It is all a big fat lie and there is no useful point for Ghana's school children.
It is a betrayal of the History and People of Ghana, from where we sit.
Pegging Ghana's downward spiral to independence day in 1957 allows them to escape their own role in the fall of Ghana, as so many records show today.
No, momentous date for the downward spiral of Ghana is 24th February, 1966. But, it all started in 1965, in fact earlier, as records now show, with the subversion, and its culmination in the overthrow 24th February, 1966.
Fact is, by February, 1966, the year Kwame Nkumah's CCP was overthrown, Ghana was miles ahead of Singapore on practically every measure of economic performance. (Google and read about all of that in our series, "Only mad 60-year olds fault Kwame Nkrumah for Ghana's development quagmire").
See and know the facts in the data!
The GDP chart above shows that while Singapore had a higher GDP than Ghana in 1961, two years later in 1963, Ghana had surpassed Singapore so that by 1965, Ghana's GDP was almost 10 percentage points higher than Singapore's. Then, after 1965, beginning in 1966 and with the NLC at the controls, it all begun to go downhill, negatively. Beginning in 1969, Singapore never looked back at the Africans in Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana.
That is data you can take to your favorite bank!
Today, in 2017, only egoistical, mad men, only people like the ones we witnessed at the Flagstaff House chasing after a government vehicle operated by a police officer, only they and their employers, only those with their own selfish and diabolical political agendas, only they would attempt to conflate Ghana's fall in February 1966 with the superior performance of Ghana from 1951, through independence in 1957, and up to February 24, 1966, and the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah.
We believe that most Ghanaians are rational people.
We believe that most Ghanaians are objective, given fair and accurate facts.
With all due respect, every single Ghanaian ought to understand that rationally, by commonsense alone, the baseline, that starting point for "the hopeless State", "the failed Ghana", the bastardized Ghana constantly trumpeted by the Akufo Addos, the Bawumias, the Rawlings, the Kuffours, the Amoako-Baahs, the Wereko-Brobbeys, etc., the origin of that sorry baseline is NOT 1957, the year Ghana became independent of Great Britain.
Rather, that bastardized Ghana began in 1966 with the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah!
GHANA'S STRIVE FOR DIGNITY, DEVELOPMENT AND INDEPENDENCE HAD ITS DETRACTORS AT HOME:
In 1966, before the overthrow, Ghana had broken diplomatic relations with Great Britain, the second most important external actor in the overthrow.
For generations and hundreds of years before independence in 1957, the Gold Coast/Ghana, contributed in no small measure to the development or Europe and that same Great Britain, from Takoradi all the way to Singapore. Yes, Singapore, where just the other day former President Kuffour stood and proudly christened an oil drilling rig in his own name while bemoaning Ghana's aborted developmental agenda 60 years and counting in his sad self-serving song.
Mr. Kuffour, 16 years ago, had 8 years to do important things for Ghana, including fixing that fraud of a Constitution. Kuffour could have fixed that tax thing, but cared for other things more. The oil they found during his time, they screwed Ghana with the contract system to christened Ghana Hybrid System. It is now more than $6 billion in continuing losses to Ghana and Akufo Addo, the new Kuffour with the plan for the free SHS and factories for every district, cannot be bothered.
Ghana, allow all of the jokes to be on them!
Let all of the jokes be on the tradition that stood against the Unitary Ghana concept and in dark corners of foreign embassies and capitals from Lome, to Lagos, to Monrovia, to London, aided and abetted the maiden overthrow of that duly elected government of Ghana through the barrel of the gun and hollow cups of coup plotter narratives most of whose truth and fidelity have since 1966 fallen apart (as more reliable information have now become available).
The Akufo Addos, the Bawumias, the Rawlings, the Kuffours, and the Amoako-Baahs love to parade around town chanting coup-plotter narratives and throwing out sundry data, hollering that Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana was "broke" in 1966, that Ghana in 1966 had a very high, unsustainable national debt, and thus the overthrow.
But sure, in the early- to mid-1960s, Ghana had economic problems just as any other country. For one, the price of cocoa had been "engineered" downward as punishment for Ghana's strife for development, respect, and independence. And much of promised development aid had been withheld, even as they paid little for more products from Ghana.
As we observed in the "60-Year Old Mad Men" series, when Kwame Nkrumah's government was overthrown by Ankrah-Harlley-Afrifa-Nunoo-Deku traitor bunch backed by "rascal" Busia, Gbedemah, and the Johnson CIA, Ghana owned an amount from all sources that was less than 30% of Ghana's annual GDP at that time.
In comparison, the British national debt-to-GDP ratio, was 75%, in 1966.
Here is their own partial list of investments and development Kwame Nkrumah bought for Ghana, up to the mid-1960s:
• Tema Harbour
• Cape Coast University
• Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
• Accra-Tema Motorway,
• Akosombo dam, (came on line in 1965)
• Black Star Line
• Construction of numerous schools and hospitals,
• Ghana Medical School
• Okomfo Anokye Hospital
• Ghana Atomic Energy Commission
• State-owned enterprises like Ghana Airways, Tema Food, GNTC, State Hotels etc Complex, GIHOC,
• State farms
• Valco (ours)
• Schools (your've seen the table above on that one)
• Railway Locomotives and improvements to rail services. (In our expose on Gbedemah this year, we showed that the then Finance Minister at one time ordered 24 Henschel engines for Ghana. Upon further checking, we can report that the about 5 of these locomotives were still in use 12 years ago, while Mr. Kuffour was president).
SUPPORTING DEVELOPMENT PLANS UNDER KWAME NKRUMAH:
• Accelerated Development Plan for Education (ADPE) (1951/1961)
• Consolidated Plan (1958-59)
• Second Five Year Plan (1959-64) – dropped in 1961
• Seven-Year Plan for National Reconstruction and Development (1963/64-1966 (Following the February 1966 coup, the 7YP was formally dropped).
To be continued.....
SOURCES/NOTES:
1. Ebony Magazine. Ghana's Industrial Revolution: Nation Toils to Close the Technology Gap, May 1964.
2. Ghana has failed after 60 years – Wereko-Brobby, (https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Ghana-has-failed-after-60-years-Wereko-Brobby-512711).
3. Ghana’s debt to GDP hits 74%- Ken Ofori Atta, (https://citifmonline.com/2017/02/21/ghanas-debt-to-gdp-hits-74-ken-ofori-atta/).
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Subj: 51 Years Ago This Feb 24th, They Stole Ghana’s Industrial Revolution!
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