Ghana’s Day Of Shame- The Legacy!! – Dr. Kwame Osei

24 February will be exactly 50 years since the illegal overthrow of Ghana’s democratically elected President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in a dastardly and wicked plot orchestrated by American, British and French intelligence with the aid of local Ghanaian charlatans.

Before the overthrow of Dr Kwame Nkrumah it is fair to say that Ghana’s economy was booming in real terms with a relatively strong currency, virtually full employment, a thriving agriculture and manufacturing sector, a country where DUMSO was unheard of and that accessibility to portable water was not an issue – furthermore ALL Ghanaians regardless of status and class were entitled to free education and free comprehensive healthcare such was the vision and leadership of the great man.

However with information from de-classified CIA documents, there was a plot to remove Kwame Nkrumah from power as far back as 1964 and this was because of three main reasons

The First being that Nkrumah was an ardent Pan-Afrkanist who wanted to see the continent grow from the shackles of imperialism into an oasis of freedom and economic prosperity for the masses of African people – This view by the Western elite who need and live off Africa was too much to countenance - incidentally the proof that the West needs Africa and its resources was vividly and candidly articulated by former French president Jacques Chirac who once states that “Without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third [world] power”

There’s a similar one from another former French president Mitterrand from 1957 who said that "Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century" which says a similar thing. These two comments illustrate to you the strategic importance of Africa to France generally but to the West in particular and why Nkrumah’s Pan-African agenda which included a continental trading block and single currency was so dangerous to them.

The next reason why Nkrumah had to go was because of his rapid industrialization policy – in actual fact CIA de-classified documents again state that if Nkrumah had not been overthrown Ghana would have become a developed economy by 1970 – Had Nkrumah not being overthrown and had been allowed to complete the seven year development plan the economic this would have sent a message to other African countries who too were in the yoke of economic slavery that it was possible to create an economic reality for oneself free of western interference - thus damaging the geo-political and geo-economic interests of the West.

The final reason why Nkrumah was overthrown and this precipitated his demise was that he wrote a very powerful and profound book entitled ‘Neo colonialism: the last stage of imperialism’ – In this book which I recommend ALL Ghanaians to patronize, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah thoroughly with critical analysis came to the view that the former colonial masters instilled Neo-Colonialism as a political system to insure control of their former colonies. He argues that the essence of Neo-Colonialism is: that the state which is subject to it, is, in theory independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus, its political policy is directed from outside.

This together with the way in which Osagyefo was beginning to conscientize the masses of Ghanaian people angered the American government who were determined to get rid o Nkrumah as he was exposing their dirty works.

The legacy of this wicked coup to overthrow whether you agree with Nkrumah’s politics or not, a democratically elected leader of a sovereign state is that we seemed as a nation not to have learned the lessons from our day of SHAME that not only destroyed Ghana’s forward march towards economic freedom but by extension the continent of Africa’s aspiration to become truly independent.

The very same people that orchestrated the coup to remove Dr Nkrumah are the very same people that our current crop of leadership seem to be looking to develop Ghana - Our leadership conveniently and naively forget that the so-called development partners of today were/are the very same people who sabotaged Ghana’s economy through manipulating the price of cocoa to make it difficult for Dr Kwame Nkrumah to fund social developmental projects, and orchestrated his downfall.

Again lets us not forget that it was these seem western agencies that hoodwinked the PNDC in the 1980’s and 1990’s to accept flawed economic policies such as the so-called Structural Adjustment Programmes and Economic Recovery Programmes that decimated Ghana’s agriculture and manufacturing base and leaving more than 300,000 Ghanaians jobless and is responsible for the mass unemployment we see in Ghana today.

We have not learnt from the lessons of history as our leadership believe everything the westerner says and have inordinate trust and faith in the westerner without even questioning their judgment whilst at the same time doubting their own ability and that of their fellow African – we see this in the way again our clueless leadership has gone cap in hand to the IMF to seek solutions to their inability to manage competently the economic affairs of the country.

Next in Ghana’s day of SHAME is the wicked mindset of Ghanaians – it was this selfish and wicked mindset of some Ghanaians that enabled the West to use local collaborators like Kotoka and Ankrah to overthrow Nkrumah and these two cared more for their stomachs rather than the interest of the nation state.

Again today there are greedy, selfish and wicked Ghanaians in our midst who are selling our birthright to the Westerner, Arab, Chinese and Indian – this is evident in many facets of Ghanaian life – from Ghanaian MP’s accepting allegedly US$5,000 each as bribes to allow Vodafone to acquire Ghana Telecom cheaply, to Ghanaian businessmen and politicians that allow western oil firms like Tullow oil and Kosmos oil to take the lion’s share of OUR oil in behind the scenes shadowy deals, from the chiefs that sell/ lease land to Chinese and Western mining companies to mine for our gold whilst leaving the mining communities polluted and desolate through to supposed men of God who use the word of God to manipulate, deceive and hoodwink naïve people into giving millions of cedis annually whilst they (the so-called men of God) live opulent lifestyles whilst their church members scrap from hand to mouth to the greed and wicked corruption going on at the DVLA, METRO MASS TRANSIT, TEMA PORTS and so forth and the FACT that one man can claim in dubious circumstances the amount of GHS51 Million Ghana Cedis and not feel any scruple for this.

24 February 1966 was a day of MASSIVE SHAME for Ghana that subsequently has seemingly killed the soul, sprit and conscience of the Ghanaian which may take another 1000 years to heal given the current state of chaos, greed and madness that is engulfing the country. – SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!!!