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In those days when succession to the throne could be very acrimonious, there existed a tacit understanding among all the contestants and their supporters anytime the throne became vacant. This unwritten law or convention was strictly adhered to because as soon as a new occupant to the throne emerges, all dissension ceased and every unsuccessful claimant pledged his unalloyed loyalty to the new ruler.

Declaration of Dr Nkrumah's Birthday as a Public Holiday: My write-up today has to do with the intention of President Mills' administration to declare Dr Nkrumah's birthday a public holiday. This issue needs to be looked at critically. Though people hold divergent views on the role played by Dr Nkrumah towards the granting of independence to mother Ghana, we all are agreed on one thing. Nkrumah deserves to be honoured for the yeoman role he played in the struggle towards Ghana's independence and the emancipation of the black man in Africa and the rest of the world.

But the question agitating my mind and that of generality of Ghanaian is: “Is a declaration of his birthday as a public holiday the best way to honour and reward this great son of Ghana and Africa as a whole?”

B]Controversy Surrounding His Actual Date of Birth: What is the actual date of birth of Dr Nkrumah? In other words, when was he born? Available evidence indicates that the 21st September 1909 fell on a Tuesday. Was Nkrumah born on Tuesday? Again, another school of thought believes that Dr Nkrumah was born on a Friday because his other names were Francis Kofi Nwiah. This draws us into a dilemma. We have a Friday, a Saturday and a Tuesday and any of such days could have been born the day on which Dr Kwame Nkrumah was born. But the question is which of those days?

Official Personal Records as against one's actual records:

If we should use 21st September, 2009 as Dr Nkrumah's date of birth, and declare it a public holiday, are we not giving tacit endorsement to an act which we all know is wrong? Are we not endorsing and encouraging others to engage in falsehood or falsification of records? We have a situation in the country today whereby individuals, in order to prolong their stay in both the Civil and Public Service reduce their ages at the point of employment so that on attainment of the compulsory retirement age, their official ages allows them to still remain at their duty posts.

We all know the effects of such people staying at post, while young and vibrant ones are denied employment opportunities.

Falsification of Records: We all frown at falsification of one's personal records which in itself is an act of dishonesty. Churches, Mosques and every genuine institution speak out against such practice. In Sports, particularly Football, African countries, Ghana and Nigeria inclusive have used Papa's squads masquerading as under 17 players to win age group competitions and we applaud such Sports federations for having achieved the “unachievable” in the history of sports.

There is the need to do things the right way. Declaring 21st September a public holiday will be the greatest disservice we could ever do to Dr Nkrumah and Ghana. What message will we be sending to our people and the international community? What moral lesson do we expect our children to learn from such practice? That the country endorses falsification of records, dishonesty and under-current dealings?

Please, don't get me wrong. Read on. In the case of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, we all are aware that the act was not deliberately done. He was given wrong information pertaining to his date of birth and that information has stuck till date. In those days, records were not accurately kept. It might be that a member of the family came up with his date of birth and since no attempts were made to challenge the information, the date has stuck till now.

It is also pertinent to state that, people in those days were not as inquisitive as we are at present. If they were, relevant questions and arguments like the ones being raised might have been asked and we would not have put ourselves in the quagmire we now find ourselves. And by the way, who were you to have questioned the birthdates of reigning Heads of State in those days? Even now, what will make you dispute the date of birth of another person? If the person says he was born on such and such a date, on what grounds can you question the authenticity of that date? Unless someone draws your attention to it, you might not think it is a subject worth venturing into. And so, such records have remained in our archives and history books till date.

Has anyone bothered to check whether the date given as the birth dates of Pa Grant, Dr Aggrey, George Ekem Furgesson, Dr Busia, Dr Ephraim Amu and many other nationalist of repute were the actual days on which they were born? In the cases of Dr Liman, Ex-Presidents Kufuor and Rawlings and President Mills, we would not have much of a problem because things had moved into their proper perspective and record keeping had become a sine qua nom practice.

Declaring 21st September a Public Holiday will be tantamount to burying another person else's corpse: I was once a participant at a funeral where on close examination of the dead body after its arrival from the morgue, it was discovered that the body was not that of the deceased. Blame game was suspended for a while. Quickly, the body was dispatched back to the hospital where after relevant documentation and the necessary purification rites had been performed the body of the “true son of the soil” was released to the family and the other body returned to the morgue.

Why did the family not bury the other body? They were meant to bury the dead. Weren't they? Yes! Was the body brought not a dead body? It was, but what? One might ask. They did not because it wasn't their own. Period!

Thus, if it was discovered that Dr Kwame Nkrumah was not born on the 21st September, wouldn't it be dishonest and improper on the part of the State to declare the day a Public Holiday? If this has not been detected and brought into the public domain and that of the Government, it would have been a different thing. But since there is controversy surrounding the exact date of birth, and the alarum bell has been rung, it behooves on the Mills administration to thread cautiously on the issue. Let us not take an irreversible position on the issue. Let us not set a very bad precedent.

What Must Be Done? Let the powers that be do the right thing. Let Government not rush into declaring the day a public Holiday until all the contentious issues are dealt with. Let us carry out a research into the background of the late President with a view to arriving at his actual date of birth. There are some aged members of his family who are alive and can be of help in this regard.

Holidays are Just too Many. For once, let us put aside our emotions and think rationally. There is a saying that “the black man spends for pleasure and begs for necessities”. I am one of those who take strong exception to that for I have unflinching faith in the abilities of our God-given leaders to take firm and wise decisions at the right moment.

But the question we should ask ourselves is, are the public holidays not becoming superfluous?¬¬. We have the Christian and Muslim Holidays, Boxing Day, New Year Day, Independence Day, May Day, AU Day, Republic Day, Farmers Day and what have you. In addition, once in every four years, December 8 is declared a public Holiday for the conduct of both Presidential and Parliamentary Elections. Have we ever sat down to count the number of working hours lost as a result of such public holidays¬¬.

In the early days of our nationhood when Chiefs and rulers were masters of all that they surveyed, they enacted many edicts and designated some days as 'da bone' (evil days) - days on which people within the community were not allowed to perform certain tasks. Examples, go fishing, go to their farms, or go to certain rivers or streams. Failure to adhere to these traditional edicts would invite on the offender severe sanctions which at times included a fatwa like banishment. But over the years, people have come to realize the effects such “prohibitions” have on free movement and the economy. As a result, these traditional edicts, prohibitions or injunctions have been reduced to the barest minimum.

¬But what is there in a holiday¬ after all? Not much! Even Giant United States which is often touted as God's Own Country and got her independence as early as 1776 doesn't have as many holidays as we have in Ghana. And the rate at which that we are going, it wouldn't be a surprise that in ten or more years' time the numbers of holidays we have might have doubled, tripled or even quadrupled. Continued    Source: Daniel Danquah Damptey

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