Poor Kwesi Pratt!!!

It was with amused contempt that I read an editorial titled “Poor Osageyfo[sic],” ( I suppose this is Kwesi Pratt's Nzema version of “Osagyefo”?), and sourced to the Insight newspaper in the Ghanaweb.com edition of February 9, 2007. And here, we significantly note that The Insight newspaper is published by Mr. Kwesi Pratt, a perennial loudmouth and ideologically erratic pseudo-Nkrumaist who has been crying “Wolf!” for both gratuitous and no apparent reasons on the postcolonial Ghanaian political landscape for some two decades now. Interestingly, Mr. Pratt, who claims to be a diehard Nkrumaist, was also a staunch lackey of Mr. Jeremiah John Rawlings during most of the twenty years that the latter literally and summarily reduced our beloved country into a human abattoir (or slaughterhouse).

And so when Mr. Pratt cynically pretends to be lamenting the demise, both corporeally and politically, of the putative “African Show Boy,” we know exactly which aspect of Mr. Nkrumah that Mr. Pratt is lamenting: that autocratic and murderous aspect of the man which orchestrated and supervised the prison assassinations of Dr. J. B. Danquah and Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey, among a countless number of others; as well as the extra-judicial incarceration of Dr. Ako-Adjei, the very man whose recommendation introduced a largely anonymous Kwame Nkrumah onto the Ghanaian political landscape, and then the continental African and global political podium at large.

Thus, when Mr. Pratt vacuously asserts that: “The very forces which opposed [Nkrumah's] struggles for independence from colonial rule are in power today and they have the responsibility of leading the celebration of 50 years of [Ghana's] independence,” it is not quite clear exactly what Mr. Pratt is talking about. One thing, however, is clear: Mr. Pratt may be the most politically and intellectually bankrupt and illiterate yet to publish a newspaper in Ghana whose name, ironically, is called “The Insight.” At best the latter has been known to produce nothing short of patent guff or journalistic tripe, invariably verging on the outright flagrant and criminal. And to be certain, on several occasions, this writer has been almost prompted to call on the august Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) to immediately withdraw his membership if, indeed, Mr. Pratt is a registered, dues-paying member of the GJA.

It is also rather amusing to hear Mr. Pratt pretend as if the ruling New Patriotic Party voted itself into power against the mandate and goodwill of the Ghanaian electorate. But even more invidious and outright criminal, here again, is when the “Insight” managing-editor avers rather flakily that: “The very forces which opposed [Nkrumah's] struggles for independence from colonial rule are in power today and they have responsibility of leading the celebration of 50 years of independence.” In sum, just what rationale does Mr. Pratt think lay behind the historic founding of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), the seminal Ghanaian political party of the twentieth century? The perpetual entrenchment of British colonial rule?

And while almost nobody who has been closely following the goofy offerings of Mr. Pratt, which the latter routinely and shamelessly passes off as journalistic “insight,” expects the following of him any time soon, had he thoroughly acquainted himself with the remarkable corpus of his hero's own writings, Mr. Pratt would have learned long ago that President Nkrumah never dated his landmark entry onto the Ghanaian political podium from June 12, 1949, when his so-called “Convention” People's Party (CPP) was founded but rather from mid-1947 when the UGCC was founded, even though on the exact date of the founding of the UGCC, the obviously and embarrassingly overgrown Mr. Nkrumah was stranded in the British metropolis and ineffectually engaged in colonial, expatriate student activism, while Dr. Danquah and his seminal cohorts of the UGCC were feverishly struggling for Ghana's independence.

Likewise, had Mr. Pratt bothered to find out exactly why Mr. Nkrumah chose to prefix the name of his breakaway kamikaze party with “Convention,” the perennial malcontent would not have made his woefully uninformed remark about who “the pioneering fighters for Ghana's independence in the post-World War II era” really were. Indeed, those of us who have done extensive research on this matter keep wondering just what prevented Dr. Danquah and his fellow patriotic warriors from suing to prevent the future dictator of Ghana from filching the name “Convention” and, with the latter, the critical mass of the youthful membership of the UGCC.

And then also, has Mr. Pratt bothered to find out just why Ghanaians today celebrate Independence Day on March 6th and not September 9, the CPP founder's guesstimated natal anniversary or birthday? Then again, when he attempts to hoodwink his readers by fatuously claiming that: “These are the forces which boycotted Parliament when Nkrumah moved his 'motion of destiny' for Ghana's independence,” does it in anyway occur to Mr. Pratt that if Dr. Danquah had had his way, Ghana's Independence would have been declared on March 6, 1954 rather than exactly three years into the future? And that this delay was due largely to the fact that Messrs. Nkrumah, Gbedemah and Archie Casely-Hayford were inebriated with heady semi-colonial transitional power? And also that had Dr. Danquah boycotted Parliamentary proceedings, as Mr. Pratt would have his audience believe, Ghanaians would not be celebrating our independence anniversaries on March 6? You see, the problem with debating an intellectual and political illiterate is that one ends up having wasted one's precious time.

The preceding notwithstanding, it is rather insulting to read the following unpardonably jaundiced passage from the editorial ink of Mr. Pratt: “As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of our independence, feverish preparations have been put in place to refurbish the image of J. B. Danquah and Obetsebi-Lamptey some [two?] of the most strident opponents of Nkrumah. The Danquah and Obetsebi-Lamptey circles are being reconstructed and it is expected that they will be unveiled during the independence celebrations.”

And here, we demand to know whether, indeed, Mr. Pratt believes that the annual celebration of Ghana's independence is the patented (private) property of the African Show Boy? But we must also immitigably deplore Mr. Pratt's insufferable irreverence for Dr. Danquah, who actually earned his doctorate, by cavalierly calling the Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics “J. B. Danquah,” while rather ironically and inappropriately prefixing the name of Mr. Kwame Nkrumah who never earned himself a doctoral degree with the academic honorific of “Dr.” Or is it just that Mr. Pratt is a pathological liar and a clinical idiot pretending to know anything about these two major players of modern Ghanaian history.

Indeed, rather than “refurbish” the Danquah and Obetsebi-Lamptey circles, we are hereby calling on the government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to ensure that each of the celebrated “Big Six” Founding Fathers of modern Ghana is honored with an Nkrumah-type mausoleum, or cenotaph, as may be deemed appropriate, including also Mr. George Alfred (Paa) Grant by the close of 2007. Also that the infamous Nsawam Medium-Security Prison be declared a National Historical Site, and thus be promptly closed and converted into the Museum of Nkrumah's Reign-Of-Terror, in much the same manner that the European Jewry have Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka, among other sacred holocaust memorials and sites. But even more significantly, we urge the Kufuor government to rename the University of Ghana after the man who more than any other Ghanaian patriot caused Ghana's flagship academy to be established in 1948, and not 1958. And equally significantly, it is our fervent prayer that 50 years from now, the government of the New Patriotic Party will, once more, be leading the Ghanaian people in a more memorable and conciliatory celebration of Ghana's centennial Independence Anniversary.
Long Live Ghana! Long Live the Democratic Spirit of Dr. Danquah! Nkrumah may never die, but Danquah is immortalized!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., was recently selected by The White House Millennium Council for The National Millennium Time Capsule and Listing inclusion in the 2008 Edition of “Who's Who in America.” He is the author of twelve books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana.” E-mail: [email protected].