Say, Sekou, What Is Your Ahmed Sekou Touré Here?

I thought this jaded issue was long and definitively settled when the nephew and maternal Clan Head of the Nkrumah Family in Nkroful came out to publicly declare that Mr. Onzy Anwar Kwame Nkrumah had been officially recognized and acknowledged as a bona fide member of the Nkrumah Clan and the son of Modern Ghana’s first post-colonial leader. I also vividly recall writing about this story. So, it is rather a nuisance for Mr. Sekou Nkrumah, the last child and second son of Mrs. Fathia Ritz Nkrumah, whose public impugnation of the Nkrumah fatherhood of his half-brother, Onzy, provoked the public issuance of the acceptance of the latter as one that was already settled beyond question or dispute by the family of President Nkrumah itself (See “Why Should You Elect a ‘Fraud’ and an ‘Imposter’ – Sekou Nkrumah Lashes Out at Onzy” Ghanaweb.com 8/23/20).

I am also aware that an Egyptian-born elderly woman married to a Ghanaian citizen, an ex-serviceman, if memory serves yours truly accurately – he must have passed on at this writing – by the name of Mrs. Sinare, a close friend and confidante of the late Ghanaian leader, has publicly stated that, indeed, Onzy Nkrumah is the bona fide biological son of President Nkrumah by an Egyptian-born paramour with whom the world-renowned Ghanaian leader was carrying on a torrid affair approximately about the same time that the elder Mr. Nkrumah was in the official process of negotiating for the hand of Ms. Fathia Ritz, the Egyptian Coptic Christian who was soon to become the bride of the Ghanaian leader. Mrs. Sinare, at the time of her very public revelation, also noted that, in fact, it was her husband who had executed the details of all the necessary protocols that culminated in Egyptian President Abdel Gamal Nasser’s approval and assistance of the same.

In other words, there exists credible evidence that, indeed, a gallivanting obstreperously lecherous Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah, as he was known at the time, had begotten another Egyptian-mothered son by another Egyptian woman other than Mrs. Fathia Ritz Nkrumah. At any rate, I am also looking at the customary and cultural aspect of this issue. Which is that as an ethnic Nzema and an Akan, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah may very well have fathered both Messieurs Sekou Nkrumah and Onzy Nkrumah but, of course, by Akan tradition and customary practice, neither of these two men have any legitimate claim by way of inheritance to the Nkroful-based Nkrumah Clan, however incontrovertibly firm their paternity or paternal parentage may be reckoned and duly acknowledged.

So, practically speaking, what we have here are two veritable imposters, in the words of a livid and proprietary Mr. Sekou Nkrumah, or two foreign-mothered Egyptian SOBs literally duking it out over absolutely nothing. To be certain, not very long ago, the Head of the Nkrumah Clan at Nkroful noted that Mr. Onzy Nkrumah had more significantly and palpably demonstrated his legitimate kinship with his father’s people, by substantially investing in either the renovation or the complete reconstruction of the Nkrumah Family House at Nkroful, as well as in the welfare of the Nkrumah Family itself. The obvious subtext here, of course, was that unlike the vacuously garrulous or talkative Mr. Sekou Nkrumah, Mr. Onzy Nkrumah, the more responsive and pragmatic of these two half-brothers or Nkrumah scions, preferred to put his dollars and cents where his mouth was.

This statement ought to have taught some meaningful lessons to Mr. Sekou Nkrumah, who seems to think that all that matters is the sort of official conjugal recognition afforded him as the son of the Egyptian-born Mrs. Fathia Ritz Nkrumah. Sekou Nkrumah’s proprietary arrogance is one that only strikingly reflects the emotional immaturity of this 50-something-year-old man, who ought to know better and be able to recognize the starkly inescapable fact that he is not the sole owner of the right of claim to an Nkrumah paternity. There are dozens, if not scores, of Nkrumah scions, that is, children and grandchildren, who have yet to officially make themselves known to both the Nkrumah Clan and the global community at large.

Now, the question of how an Egyptian-born Mr. Onzy Nkrumah got to be issued a Ghanaian birth certificate and/or granted Ghanaian citizenship is one that may be best answered by the citizenship laws of Ghana, and maybe the latter’s statutory supplement in customary, traditional or common law. So far, there does not appear to be any problem among the executive-rank membership of the rump-Convention People’s Party (r-CPP), the marginal political party whose leadership claims direct ideological and nominal descent from the Nkrumah-founded and led proto-Convention People’s Party (p-CPP), in having Onzy Nkrumah elected as its 2^nd Vice-President. So, what is Sekou Nkrumah’s problem here? As well, significantly, must also be noted that the Onzy Nkrumah antagonist is not even known to be a dues-paying member of the rump-Convention People’s Party. So, say, Sekou, what is your Ahmed Sekou Touré palaver/palabra here?

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

August 23, 2020

E-mail: [email protected]