By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Of course, a “fan-fool” is a simplified and more poetic variation on the word “fanatic.” And in Ghana, there are two types of ideologues, namely, those who cannot see beyond the theatrical superficiality of rhetorical sovereignty and the periodic flying of buntings in celebration of chimeras, on the one hand, and those who healthily and sagaciously privilege human development over and above vacuous and largely wasteful idolatrous monuments and memorials erected in celebration of indigenous tyranny shamelessly paraded as psychosomatic symbols of emancipation from Western imperialism.
Kwame Nkrumah himself appreciated a bit of the unpardonable inanity of the preceding, and thus the quite “revolutionary” attempt to change his name from “Francis” to Kwame. For fan-fools like Mr. Bernard Mornah, of the so-called People’s National Convention (PNC), however, such psychologically cathartic negotiation remains an insurmountable obstacle; and so, really, one wonders what makes this upstart worthy of a rejoinder, when this most daft and foulmouthed Nkrumaist fan-fool sneeringly presumes to impugn the remarkable contribution of Mr. William (Paa Willie) Ofori-Atta to Ghana’s liberation struggle against British colonial hegemony.
In the wake of the Okyenhene’s launching of the year-long celebration of the centenary birthday anniversary of the first school prefect of Achimota College, the nucleus of what became Ghana’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana, Mr. Mornah was reported to have retorted that Mr. Ofori-Atta was merely a facile and passive beneficiary of a happenstance (See “Ofori-Atta Contributed Nothing to Independence – Bernard Mornah” Ghanaweb.com 10/6/10).
The latter, of course, is in allusion to the 1948 arrest of the six leading members of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), the very ideological vehicle that produced the future President Nkrumah. Maybe this arrogant ignoramus ought to have had his ear-flaps tweaked to the excruciating point of a shear, and then have Q-tips inserted into his evidently vegetable gray-matter with the elementary fact of Paa Willie having almost singularly proposed the name of the seminal national political organization to cultivate, hatch and nurture the very notion of independence as a cross-cultural enterprise of the best and the brightest.
The truth of the matter is that it was Kwame Nkrumah to whom the wave of independence, catapulted by the February 1948 episode involving Sgt. Adjetey and the two other World War II veterans, an event that was meticulously and systematically orchestrated by Osu-Alata’s Nii Kwabena Bonne, came as a windfall scarcely two months after his return from sojourn in the United States and Britain, respectively! And so yes, if the climactic arrest of the Big Six could be so naively and fatuously characterized as a “swoop,” then, it goes without saying that it was “Nkroful Kwame,” and not “Paa Willie,” who was the vintage beneficiary and veritable creation of circumstances. But, of course, nobody expected the criminally mendacious “myth-makers” of the NDC-CPP camp to courageously acknowledge this visceral fact, let alone canonize it as part and parcel of the standard, or received, narrative of Ghana’s independence.
The catch here, as it were, for delirious Nkrumacrats like Mr. Mornah, of course, is that even if one argumentatively, or rhetorically, concedes the fallacy of Paa Willie being a serendipitous beneficiary of a fluke, or “swoop,” as the wet-eared PNC hack would have it, the significant question remains regarding what the mono-visual – or tunnel-visioned – Atta-Mills government of the so-called National Democratic Congress has done to celebrate the yeomanly contributions of the other four remaining members of the Big Six, including Dr. J. B. Danquah, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics and undisputed mentor of Mr. Nkrumah?
This latter question becomes singularly significant, in view of what Mr. Mornah vehemently decries as attempts by some “unpatriotic Ghanaians” to distorting the mainstream – or generally accepted and recognized – history of our country. We must also note here, at least in passing, that the much-touted policy of free education that is routinely credited to the African Show Boy was veritably the brainchild of Mr. William Ofori-Atta, as evinced by a critical examination of the “Working Papers” of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) and those of the Gold Coast Youth Conference (GCYC) before the former!
It is also pathetically evident that Mr. Mornah is himself the victim of the epic hoax that is the Limann-minted so-called People’s National Convention. For as many a Ghanaian citizen who was of age may readily and vividly recall, Dr. Hilla Limann was the proud and unabashed champion of market economy and the kind of “property-owning democracy” staunchly championed by Dr. Danquah. And so, really, it is the opportunistic likes of Mr. Mornah who have more explaining to do, as it were, to their primary constituents on the Fourth-Republican Ghanaian political landscape.
Maybe the cynical likes of Mr. Mornah ought to read what the authoritative American scholar of Ghana’s independence movement and recently deceased author of the book titled Ghana In Transition, Dr, David Apter, had to say about the stature and rhetorical finesse and genius of Paa Willie vis-à-vis the African Show Boy. For those who may not know this, according to the legendary Princeton University scholar, if, indeed, the dauphin of Osagyefo Nana Ofori-Atta I had been as inordinately ambitious and megalomaniacal as Mr. Nkrumah, the history of Ghana would be much different today and unarguably far more sanguine than it is!
Ultimately, what ought to provoke the unremitting ire of well-meaning Ghanaians, both at home and abroad, is to hear cynical and ungrateful non-achieving and marginal party hacks like Mr. Mornah criminally attempt to desecrate the memory of the other five members of the Big Six.
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and the author of “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].
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