Dr. Akosa`s declaration: The sermon is the same

I HAVE read and heard snippets of the speech delivered by Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa at a recent press conference during which he declared his Intention to run for president on the ticket of the Convention People's party (CPP).

Professor Akosa's speech made me smile a knowing smile. He criticized the building of an official structure for the Presidency. He deplored the situation where mothers are detained in hospitals because they are unable to pay the bills following childbirth. He deplored the over-all poverty in the country. He deplored the greed, the arrogance, the great divide between the rich and the poor. And so on.

I smiled because, years ago, similar charges were leveled against Kwame Nkrumah and his CPP Government, a government in which Professor Akosa's father, the late Mr. J. C. Akosa, served as the District Commissioner for Asante Mampong. Incidentally, Mr. J. C. Akosa was popularly known as "Jesus Christ" (from his initials) and "DC Akosa".

The then opposition, the "ancestors" of the current New Patriotic Party (NPP), criticized Nkrumah and the CPP on a number of moves, measures, decisions and projects.
Even in the matter of independence for the country, it is said that the opposition went to Britain and said to the British Government, "sometimes, we wonder why you want to wash your hands off us."

There were pre-independence agitations to turn Ghana into a federal state. When the "opposition" came to power with Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia as Prime Minister, here was no desire to go back under colonial rule, neither was nay talk of federalism replacing unitarism as a form of government.

Mr. R. J. Moxon was a British colonial information officer who chose to stay in Ghana when we achieved independence. In his book on the Akosombo Dam and the Volta Lake, he tells the story of how the then Opposition, led by Dr. Busia, tried to dissuade the John F. Kennedy Administration of the United States from giving backing to Kaiser, the company that had the contract to build the dam. If Mr. Moxon is a Liar, then I am also a liar.

If President Kennedy had listened to the then Opposition, where would Ghana have been? Foreign opponents of Nkrumah also denounced the projects as a wasteful expenditure of millions of dollars.

The Accra-Tema motorway was also denounced by local and external critics as a road that led to nowhere. Was the expenditure on the road wasteful? Would it not be a good idea if we had the resources to build all our roads the way the Motorway was built?

Another project denounced as “a prestige project" was what became known as” JOB 600". The building was hurriedly constructed by the Nkrumah Government for a conference to discuss independence for the African continent.

Rumours later circulated that, because of alleged shoddy work, "JOB 600" was sinking. If the rumour happened to be true, there should be a crater where the building currently still stands. It is also being put to good use.

Peduase Lodge was also another “prestige project". Years later, it became the residence of the late President Akuffo-Addo when Dr. Busia was Prime Minister.
Nkrumah has been pilloried for allegedly wasting the country's resources on the independent movement in Africa. Nkrumah was said to be a megalomaniac who wanted to be the president of a united Africa.

Surprisingly enough, we continue to glory in the fact that, at one time, at least, Ghana was a shinning star in a firmament. We glory in the fact that we were the first in Black Africa to gain political independence and that a number of African leaders had their training here.

Another "wasteful prestige project" was the establishment of an atomic Energy Commission. Simply because the then Soviet Union had had a hand in building the reactor, we allowed work to come to a standstill. It is only by the grace of God that the whole plant was not dismantled and thrown away. Today, we talk of developing nuclear energy as an alternative source of power.

Even those who joined the CPP and worked with Nkrumah in his party and government were contemptuously dismissed as "Veranda Boys" who were illiterate or semi-illiterate.

District Commissioner (DC) Kwame Wake of Oda, the impregnable Krobo Edusei and Professor Akosa's own father , J. C. Akosa, were only a few of those regarded with by the then Opposition. Yet they helped Kwame Nkrumah achieve what Professor Akosa often refers to in his speeches and writings.

I am trying to point out to Professor Akosa the irony in his criticizing the Kufuor Government for building a Presidential Palace. Just as a number of Nkrumah's projects dismissed as" prestige projects", have become a useful monument later.

By the way, I have not heard Professor Akosa criticizing the Kufuor Government's refurbishment of Flagstaff House and Peduase Lodge (one of Nkrumah's "prestige projects") as wasteful in the face of poverty and the Inability of women to pay hospital bills when they are delivered of their babies.

On what he can do for this country if elected President, Professor Akosa was his usual brash, eloquent and combative self. He felt that his former position as the Director-General of the Ghana health Service has given him an insight into the country's problems, especially the levels of poverty.

My ironic smile springs from the fact that, in my 71 (seventy-one) years on this earth, I have heard it all. I have heard political speeches in which politicians say they can do better and promise Heaven to voters.

I have heard the same politicians try to explain why they could not fulfill the promises, always prompting me to remember what a British newspaper once stated, that "A Government is elected to solve problems, not explain them."

I have grown to be skeptical and cynical about politicians because, despite differences in name ands party colours, they are basically the same.

If Professor Akosa should become President, it will not take him too long to realize that it is always easy for the person who does not have to carry out the job himself. Talk is always cheap, implementation not so cheap.

While he is about it, professor Akosa will lose nothing by being gracious enough to acknowledge good work in others.

This Government has an "ancestry" that was bitterly opposed to Kwame Nkrumah and His CPP Government.

In spite of that, the Kufuor Government has done the decent thing by the Nkrumah family in rehabilitating Nkrumah's widow. The Government restored her diplomatic passport, visited her at home and in hospital and respected her wishes by allowing her to be buried here in Ghana.

Why damn the Government with such faint praise? I wish Professor Akosa well. But he should make his words smaller so that he can swallow them back with ease if he later has to.