By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Feb. 27, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]
I don't know the scholarly - if any - sources for the pontifical pronouncements of some of these fanatical Nkrumaists that make them believe that their hero/idol was, somehow, the best postcolonial leader that Ghana ever had (See "Nkrumah's Overthrow Initiated Ghana's Decline - CPP" Ghana News Agency / Ghanaweb.com 2/26/15). The unpleasant fact of the matter is that the socialist political course on which President Kwame Nkrumah took Ghana may well have effectively derailed the country's steady and salutary development for nearly a half-century.
In other words, it was not the overthrow of the extortionate and odious Nkrumah-led Convention People's Party (CPP), per se, that precipitated the socioeconomic and cultural decline of the country. Rather, it was the regressive refusal of the largely inordinately politicized and Nkrumah-inspired Ghanaian military coup-plotters who prevented the Busia-led Progress Party (PP) from leading Ghana out of the Stygian economic mess into which our first postcolonial leader had plunged the country, that complicated matters and engendered our present socioeconomic, political and cultural doldrums.
Indeed, it is scarcely arguable that had he been afforded at least a single full-term tenure of four years at the helm of our country's affairs, Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia would have acquitted himself far more creditably than Nkrumah did during the nine years that he held the reins of governance as Ghana's maximum ruler or dictator. The PP's rural-development initiatives still offer the best blue-print for effectively moving the country forward. At any rate, by the eve of his overthrow, the CPP had totally bankrupted Ghana's economy, which was primarily why Nkrumah had to abandon his Russian copycat so-called Six-Year Development Plan. And so it is rather comical to hear the likes of Mr. Opoku Amaning, the New Juaben-South rump-CPP General-Secretary, scandalously assert that a continuation of the pathologically corrupt CPP dictatorship would have greatly benefitted both Ghanaians and the inhabitants and citizenry of the entire African continent. No such observation could be more absurd.
Needless to say, it was not the Kotoka-led National Liberation Council (NLC) junta's ouster of the CPP dictatorship that caused the decline of the country, but the refusal of subsequent military adventurists and power-hungry soldiers like Cols. Acheampong, Agbo and Nkegbe, to name just a handful, to let democratic governance reign our land that engendered the socioeconomic and cultural rot and decline that Mr. Amaning is talking about. We must also emphasize, for the edification of Mr. Amaning and his ilk, that the construction of the Tema Industrial Township and the Akosombo Dam had been on the books since British colonial rule at the turn of the twentieth century and had absolutely nothing to do with Nkrumah's ideology or the lack thereof, for that matter. Both Tema and Akosombo are the brainchildren of Sir Albert Kitson, the celebrated British geologist and explorer, and have been on official government development agendas since at least 1915, when the future President Nkrumah was not much older than a toddler.
We must also point out that the nuclear reactor built for Nkrumah by the Russians, at Kwabenya, was a low-tech research reactor and not "originally designed to produce electricity," as Mr. Amaning would have his captive audience believe. It could, of course, be further developed for other expansive purposes over time. But even more significantly, Kwabenya's development may well have morphed Ghana into West Africa's equivalent of North Korea, with an Nkrumah dynasty fully entrenched on the seat of power. Indeed, this was precisely the objective of Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom (Kwesi Yorke) when the founding-proprietor of the so-called Progressive People's Party (PPP) flew in Ms. Samia Nkrumah, from Italy, to help revive and head the rump-Convention People's Party (r-CPP). I also don't think Mr. Amaning knows anything about the dangers of the radioactive materials associated with the operation of a nuclear reactor by an underdeveloped country like Ghana.
Inasmuch as the shortlived Busia-led Progress Party was not without its fair share of administrative foibles, the Danquah-Busia-Dombo Tradition cannot be any significantly held responsible for most of the very fundamental socioeconomic problems presently besieging the country. As for this nonsense about the CPP having lost its institutional landed properties in the wake of Nkrumah's ouster, one thing needs to be promptly understood here. And it is the incontrovertible fact that more than half of the membership dues paid into the coffers of the CPP were criminally and summarily extorted from non-CPP civil servants at source. And this why not very long ago, I warned the grossly misguided Ms. Samia Yaba Nkrumah and her minions to steer clear of any legal battles that cold very well spell the permanent doom of the rump-CPP.
_____________________________________________________________