Akosa`s `Ghana: The House Nkrumah Built'
Author: Ghanaian Chronicle - Ghanaian Chronicle
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010
Many things Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa might be, but two things he is not; a coward or a hypocrite. Bold, inspirational and a gifted speaker, he has what an old don has aptly captured as the courage of his own convictions.
His recent unforgettable lecture delivered in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences is a case in point. Organized at the British Council, it drew an impressive audience in addition to the live transmission on Accra's Citi FM.
Background. Atmosphere; two crucial things worth grasping head-on in order to fully appreciate and enjoy Akosa's lecture. I intuitively knew from the outset that I was in for a ball. Imagine Akosa; charismatic and passionately pro-Nkrumah. On the other hand was this Academy, some of whose very eminent senior fellows had scripted volumes in a valiant attempt to re-emphasize the role of J.B. Danquah in the fight that birthed modern Ghana.
Others in the audience had also in times past documented a personal mentoring relationship with Dr. Danquah. In a sense, it was a case of the proud Young Pioneer inspired by the great African visionary against the pro-Danquah men. There was also a way in which one got the impression somewhere during Akosa's lecture that the Danquah people had sought to water down the effects of whatever Akosa would say and ultimately and specifically, Nkrumah's role in the Academy's establishment.
It is important to remember this as I shall later return to it. Another point worth remembering is the seating arrangement in the hall. In front and to the right of the speaker were senior somewhat conservative academics including some of the very people who were openly ideologically opposed to Nkrumah and by extension to Akosa, his acolyte.
To the left was an interesting collection of other academics, more radical perhaps, and other persons not immediately recognizable to me and students who would often spontaneously clap whenever the delivery touched something deep within their very souls. The seating is important because it has serious implications for the kind of unprecedented lopsided standing ovation that followed the powerful, well researched, controversial but measured delivery.
Akosa attacked the very basis of modern Western capitalism, pointing out that the loss of 50 million Africans as slaves and cheap labour to the New World plus the looting of raw materials represented “the greatest single accumulation of capital” leading to current “massive industrial complexes.”
He questioned why we feared to teach our children the bitter truths about colonialism, contrasting it with the Jewish commemoration of the holocaust.
Clearly not fond of capitalists, Akosa posited that after that massive scramble for Africa's wealth coupled with the massive loss of brains and brawns, the current resilience of Africa ought to be appreciated, seeing how Western capitalism had been built and still thrives on African largesse.
Against the above backdrop, Akosa leveled a stinging criticism against clueless African leaders and the World Bank/Bretton Woods institutions whose policies he summarized into three: increased export of raw materials, increased loans/grants and decrease your population.
This he again contrasted with alternatives pursued in China and Asian countries with brilliant results to show today despite not necessarily swallowing the triple-regime.
educational system
He decried an educational system that had only succeeded in leaving first and second generations of educated Africans significantly disconnected from their roots.
He lamented what he termed “neo-liberal ideas in our institutions without positing them within the context of our local challenges”-in other words, educating people without making them capable of solving their problems.
He queried how we could fully utilize research rewards when African researchers funded by foreign interests did not always have a free hand to answer the questions that were germane to our development.
He called for better planning to meet the predictable challenges of population growth poignantly asking, “Ghana's population is projected to hit 35 million by 2035.” What are we doing now to safe guard that future for our children, over 3 million of whom were already on the street?
Tracing the resistance to British rule to late 19th century and to groups like the Fante Confederacy, Aborigines Rights Protection Society etc he pointed out that it was not until much later that the call for self government and independence first made by Wallace Johnson, a radical Sierra Leonean journalist became the clarion call. Hitherto, these groups appear to have been preoccupied with “fighting individual unjust ordinances” like the Land Bill, Sedition Bill etc which were impinging upon their own business interests.
The agenda of later groups like the UGCC, Akosa argued had been narrow.
He described the UGCC from which Nkrumah's CPP was formed in 1947 as having been “gripped by inertia” with Ako-Adjei proposing the invitation of the dynamic Nkrumah to run affairs as General Secretary.
Initially hesitant about taking the offer, Nkrumah is quoted to have described the UGCC leadership as “middle class reactionary lawyers and budding capitalists.”
With Nkrumah's finger firmly on the pulse of the people, it was given that he would win the 51, 54, 56 elections with CPP, described as the only party that was national in character.
The violence of the era was recalled. Akosa, a self-confessed true-blooded Ashanti recalled the pain associated with a 'stubborn' father J.C. Akosa, a died-in-the wool CPP man who refused to go into exile from Kumasi unlike countless others following the slaughtering of a sheep by then Asantehene to criminalize association with Nkrumah's CPP.
In return he had had his car and that of his friend visiting from Accra burnt.
He then recalled an incident in which only two out of the six members of the “Big Six” had been arrested in the heat of the struggle for independence and asked a powerful question. “Was the fact of the 'Big Six' an accident of history?” Akosa will not end there.
He called for a serious exercise to document the individual contributions of people who today were perhaps giving themselves more credit than they deserved for their role in the struggle for independence.
Then he launched into the bomb throwing and subversive activities of the post-independence era and then did what I have never ever heard anybody do apart from until then, only Akosa.
Of course he called for intellectual analysis of Nkrumah's Preventive Detention Act devoid of the unhelpful emotive appeals that often accompanied it. Akosa then justified the PDA.
Preventive Detention Act
In his very words, “The Preventive Detention Act was justified!” Nkrumah had the responsibility not just for his personal security but to secure and nurture the modern state. He then drew parallels with today's Patriot's Act and Counterterrorism Act of the United States and United Kingdom respectively.
By this time, you could have heard a pin drop. The room was dead silent.
Prof Akosa then recalled with pride his days as a Young Pioneer, proceeding there from to rattle the CPP code of discipline: “Love of country, discipline and obedience, honesty and morality, punctuality, protection of state property, reliability and secrecy, comradeship and forbearance, love of work, fieldcraft, self control, unaffectedness, striving to faultlessness” by which time the audience who was loving every minute of it responded with a mighty roar.
Cataloguing other achievements of the Osagyefo in the schools, hospitals and infrastructure built, Akosa, himself a Fellow, took a swipe at some of his colleagues who had been at great pains to split the glory of the establishment of the Academy between Nkrumah and Danquah who is believed to have first proposed the need for such an academy.
“That may well be true”, Akosa said, adding “but why is it that anytime the achievements of Nkrumah are being enumerated, some people want to put a twang in it?
The point is this that it was Kwame Nkrumah who established the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences…” He then lauded Ghana's first President for giving opportunities to the likes of J.C. Akosa who with his “Middle School education”, had been appointed District Commissioner, a scenario hitherto unimaginable in the colonial era where the best heights attained by the likes of Prof K.A. Busia had been to be appointed “Deputy District Commissioner.”
But the drama was hardly over. Prof Amamoo, President of the Academy and Chairman for the lecture would make sure of that. Closing, he would reveal how the proposal of Akosa's name to deliver the 2009 Jubilee lecture “had raised a few eyebrows and even objections” but how his selection had gone through all the due processes of Council.
He recalled the serious objections to Akosa's title, poetic and inspirational to some of us, but queried because “why give all the credit to one man-Nkrumah.” The real concern, he confessed was the fear “that Akosa would use our platform to advance his own agenda.”
What could Akosa's agenda be that could be so destructive as to make sabotaging his lecture a noble endeavor?
As far as I know, Akosa does indeed have an agenda and it is fairly obvious. Akosa's agenda is the Ghana project via the Nkrumah route. There is nothing diabolical about this, I would think. This being the case, what really was the fear? Did the anti-Akosa elements within the Academy fear the use of the platform to pursue his agenda or was it a fear of the very substance of what he was going to say? On Akosa's part, he ended with panache- hoping that Ghana would some day again regain such visionary leadership “under a CPP government.”
And then the standing ovation drama ensued. The people, hitherto described on Akosa's right clapped politely while the … “Verandah Boys and Girls” to his left, spontaneously rose and clapped enthusiastically.
