Nkrumah Did Not Even Found His Own Nzema Nation

I have tackled this same writer before, when he mischievously sought to tag the Akufo-Addo Administration as one that was thoroughly in the charge of the President’s family members, in particular the three traditional branches of our democratic political culture, namely, the Executive, Judiciary and the Legislature. Back then, not very long ago, the grievance of the critic was that there was something especially immoral and patently unjust about the appointments of the Two Akuffo Women, namely, Ms. Sophia Akuffo and Ms. Gloria Akuffo, respectively, as Chief Justice and Attorney-General and Minister of Justice.

Back then, I quickly added for the direly needed enlightenment of this godforsaken anti-Akufo-Addo critic that the head of the legislative branch under the present administration, Prof. Michael Aaron Oquaye, was not a blood relative of the President the way Ghanaians customarily reckoned the same. I also significantly highlighted, for the edification of this National Democratic Congress’ propagandist – to be certain, this critic could very well be one of the defeated Tribal Warlords of the erstwhile main opposition New Patriotic Party – that the Attorney-General was a bona fide member of the Executive Branch of government who worked directly under the President.

What was more, I pointed out, nobody among their peers or professional associates and colleagues had publicly questioned the academic and professional credentials and experience of either Ms. Sophia Akuffo or Ms. Gloria Akuffo, nor the capacity of these two women for administrative and professional independence, as clearly articulated by the country’s 1992 Republican Constitution. But what was even more flabbergasting on the part of the critic was the clearly sinister implication that, somehow, President Addo DankwaAkufo-Addo was the only Ghanaian leader who had absolutely no right, whatsoever, to appoint well-qualified relatives to influential positions of public trust and responsibility. I also admonished him to conduct his own research on this subject and come public with his findings.

Well, dear reader, you guessed perfectly and accurately. The SOB has yet to publicly challenge either this writer or President Akufo-Addo with his findings. Chances are that the critic had written and published the article to which I responded purely out of visceral hatred for Nana Akufo-Addo. But he does not seem to be the least bit daunted by the fact that he has lost all credibility on the subject of modern Ghanaian politics, especially where the ruling New Patriotic Party and President Akufo-Addo are concerned, so here he comes, once again, with some arrantly nonsensical article titled “Nkrumah Founded Ghana… Prof. Mike Oquaye (Modernghana.com 8/12/17).

What is even more heretically farcical about his argument is his fatuous attempt to compare King Osei Tutu, I, my own legendary ancestor, to Mr. Kwame Nkrumah or, rather, the other way around. Not that I really expected him to, but this presumably young and witheringly innocent Ghanaian abroad does not even set up a systematic set of principles for determining what makes any personality the “founder” of a nation. And so he is able to facilely and puerilely rope such legendary Founding-Fathers of the United States Gen. George Washington and Messrs. Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and Thomas Jeffersoninto his barely coherent argument.

Anybody who has studied even high school-level American History can readily identify the patent absurdity of drawing any critical or serious comparisons between President George Washington, a patriotic revolutionary in the classical sense of the term, and a desperate and pathologically scheming political opportunist like President Kwame Nkrumah. I can perfectly appreciate anybody calling President Robert Mugabe the Founder of Modern Zimbabwe, or Nelson Mandela the Founder of Post-Apartheid South Africa. The evidence is there, in the latter two cases, for all to see.

But, let’s get really serious here: what did Nkrumah really do, from the study of the Bond of 1844, joined by Okyeman in 1853, and the constant reminding of the British colonialists that their game was up, to the naming of the new collectively self-ruled nation of Ghana, the adoption of our National Coat-of-Arms and Motto, to our National Anthem and our National Flag which, by 1964, Nkrumah had effectively proscribed and replaced with that of his Convention People’s Party and another colored Red, White and Green – of dubious origins – an obvious attempt to permanently discredit the Akyem woman designer of our original Red, Gold, Green and Black Star-spangled National Flag, namely, the recently deceased Mrs. Theodosia AsiheneOkoh, and Okyeman in general. You see, dear reader, when it comes to the foundational history of Ghana, the stakes are far too high and fraught to be so facilely and non-historically or ahistorically credited to any one person.

I was also amused to “hear” this faux-Nkrumaist propagandist – he really sounds like a disappointed NDC apparatchik –cavalierly claim that Americans recognize Gen. George Washington as the Founder of their Nation. Indeed, like Ghanaians in many respects, Americans may be simple-minded in a lot of things. But giving credit where credit is not due is not one of them. Americans have Founding Fathers, even if Gen. Washington is generally held to be Primus Inter Pares, or First Among Equals. We also have Martin Luther King, Jr’s Day. And then, of course Presidents’ Day, which used to be two separate days, namely, Washington’s Birthday and Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday, which was then converted into Presidents’ Week, for all American Presidents, past and present, but now simply Presidents’ Day. For you know, Americans value our time too much to frivol with it.

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