Okoampa-Ahoofe Gets Real About the CPP & Kwame Nkrumah
When Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe said......:
"....It is...instructive...that none of the...coup d'états have been staged by any other than bona fide members of the Ghanaian military. Granted, some rascal civilians...staunchly backed regressively Darwinian means of political access, including a world-renowned...former prime minister (Busia). Interestingly, in July 1956, when President Nkrumah's...CPP...won a landslide victory... Busia rode herd on a delegation to the British office in London, to petition the British Crown, and...colonial overlord, to desist from granting the already-scheduled return of Ghana to self-governance. Fortunately... Busia and his right-wing bourgeois reactionaries did not succeed. (Busia)...however, succeeded ten years later in backing the military junta that unseated the Nkrumah administration and facilitated the precipitous devolution of Ghanaian national destiny....\
\....Indeed...Ghana's major and...only international airport is named for...Kotoka....outlaw who spearheaded the grossly unimaginative overthrow of the constitutionally elected government of the CPP... Mr. Rawlings, whose...parentage is purported to be Scottish, presided over the dastardly kidnapping and summary execution of three Ghanaian supreme court judges, all of whom belonged to a single ethnic nationality....Needless to say, the 1966 Kotoka-led coup initiated the barbaric, neo-colonial military dynasty that Ghanaian continue to suffer….\
\... In fact, many of the most vociferous civilian opposition party leaders, some of whom are currently sitting in parliament, representing misguided and hoodwinked constituents, are known to have collaborated with Kotoka's so-called National Liberation Council to unseat President Nkrumah. It is also significant to observe that these...(Busia)...rascals and executive...muggers continue to dominate whatever passes by the name of "the legitimate opposition." This state of affairs, coupled with a largely under-educated and under-informed electorate, has made it almost impossible to rectify the prevailing socioeconomic chaos ravaging...(Ghana)...”
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When Dr. Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe said all of that, what did he really mean?
Dear reader, on account of Dr. Okoampa-Ahoofe's ultra strident animosity towards the record and legacy of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of late, we hope the testament to the CPP and Dr. Kwame Nkrumah did not "knock your socks" off, as they say in New York City, USA, where Dr. Okoampa-Ahoofe tells us he resides. They are Dr. Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe's own words edited to improve readability as surely as Ghana's Harbor City built by Kwame Nkrumah, Tema, is on the same meridian as Greenwich of the colonial masters up north.
In closing, Prof Lungu will quickly make 4 points for those who are consistent with themselves and understand that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and the CPP were more than a net asset to the fortunes of Ghana. Those fair-minded people also know that Nkrumah and the CPP were in fact the most qualified team to govern Ghana beginning independence day 6 March, 1957, having won handily at the polls:
1. Dr. Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe personally identifies the Danquah-Busia "right-wing bourgeois reactionaries", namely "members of the Ghanaian military", in addition to Busia and other "rascal civilians", as the people behind the maiden coup d'état.
2. The British did not leave any financial resources (i.e., money) for Ghana at independence. What, after all, would have been the point about having a colony they possessed 100%?
3. Following the trouncing of the Danquah-Busia confederate cohorts at the polls, Nkrumah was appointed "Leader of Government Business" for the Gold Coast from 1951 to 1957. (All funds carried forward to the new Ghana Nation were funds accrued during that time).
4. At the stroke of the hour 12AM, 6 March, 1957, on Independence Day, Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah had already achieved the most important goals for Ghana in his own lifetime, Independent Ghana and Unitary Ghana:
(a) Independence for Ghana. Ghana was first on the continent of Africa in a sea of English, Portuguese, French, Italian, etc., colonies from North to South, East to West. In fact, this feat was monumental inspiration to Dr. Martin Luther King who was in Accra with Coretta, his wife, on Independence Day, 1957, as he resolved in front of then-US Vice President Nixon to keep on pushing for civil rights and the "same kind of freedom the Gold Coast is celebrating" for African-Americans and minorities in the United States2.
(b) Unitary Ghana Nation. Nkrumah gave Ghana the strongest national government Ghanaians could get, rather than a Danquah-Busia confederacy of absent-minded, unsophisticated hereditary chieftains in the middle straddling pompous, unelected Lord-Principate Danquah and his younger side-kick Busia at the top, and the masses at the bottom carrying palanquins and umbrellas for those on top of them. After all, it was Danquah who abhorred party politics so much he warned if the colonial master did not "show understanding, Akyem Abuakwa would secede from the country as a sovereign independent state with only rival of the Ashanti country3.
As it has always been the case since the overthrow, it is now up to all fair-minded people to recognize that the Nkrumah development vision and principles of governance and international relations constitute the best, surest-fire highway to development. It is development that serves all the people and lifts everyone up, not "rascals and executive...muggers". It is development that does not depend on where you come from, what language you speak, what religion you care for, what your gender is, how much money your parent and grandparent have in the bank, particularly if they stole all that money from the people in the first place.
Dear Reader, that is Dr. Kwame Nkrumah for you!
Dear reader, that is the truth in the Ghana independence record that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah headlined in that small window in Ghanaian national life, from around 1951 to 1966.
SOURCES:
1. Dr. Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe's testament for the CPP and Dr. Kwmae Nkrumah was taken from “SOUNDS OF SIRENS: ESSAYS IN AFRICAN POLITICS & CULTURE”, Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr (2004)," courtesy Atakora-Mensah, Ghanaweb, 2015-04-15 13:21:28.
2. Martine Luther King, Ghana Trip (1957), http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_ghana_trip_1957/
3. Francis Kwarteng, (2015), J.B. Danquah Was Not Qualified To Lead And Govern Ghana 1, Ghanaweb, https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/artikel.php?ID=354912