Nkrumah Was No Albert Einstein, Mr. Pratt

Kwesi Pratt never quite distinguished himself as a writer or thinker of remarkable gravitas in the Ghanaian media, so this sometime mole for the two Rawlings juntas has absolutely no moral and/or intellectual heft or authority to lecture Ghanaians about former President Kwame Nkrumah, the man who once dismissed Mr. Pratt’s own maternal uncle, Mr. Kojo Botsio, from his cabinet for using his plum political position to amass ill-gotten wealth, on Nkrumah’s status in the pantheon of Ghanaian heroes (See “Nkrumah Is the ‘Albert Einstein’ of Ghana – Kwesi Pratt” Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/23/17).

Nkrumah was definitely a great leader by Ghanaian and African standards which, in our own time, does not really mean much. The fact of the matter is that geopolitically speaking, it was the British colonial imperialists who invented Ghana as we presently know it. Nkrumah had absolutely no impact or contribution to make to this epoch-making process which, by the way, was initiated and completed nearly a decade before his own birth. The one Ghanaian who had a remarkable impact in this sphere of endeavor was the genius surveyor and great man, Mr. George Ekem Fergusson.

Nkrumah’s greatness largely lies in his capacity to practically follow through with the development plans and ideas laid down by other far more foresighted and greater souls and geniuses, such as the construction of the Akosombo Dam, which was the ideational invention or conception of British geologist and surveyor Sir Albert Kitson (1915). It was Sir Albert who also proposed the possibility of transforming the area presently known as Tema into an industrial hub.

But, of course, when it comes to the history and culture of Ghana, compared to Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah is nothing more than a toddler. In the cultural and/or intellectual discipline of philosophy and theory and historical studies or scholarship, Nkrumah is absolutely no Danquah peer. Likewise, when it comes to Danquah’s seismic impact on public and social thought, particularly on public health and civil rights, as well as the preservation and development of indigenous Ghanaian cultures, Danquah’s only possible peers are Drs. JEK Aggrey and Ephraim Amu.

Needless to say, Danquah had far more to do with the cultural determination of the provenance or ancestral origins of modern Ghanaians vis-à-vis their ancient Senegambia ancestry, and what the latter meant for the renaming of the emergent nation, than Mr. Nkrumah. And so it amuses me to no mean end, what the editor-publisher of the so-called Insight newspaper means, when Mr. Pratt likens President Nkrumah to the immortalized Dr. Albert Einstein. I also don’t know that Mr. Nkrumah developed any worthwhile and substantively creative or independent ideological theories or analytical frameworks worth the study or scholarship of any viable or significant academic establishment or institute anywhere around the globe.

Indeed, rather than cavalierly and imperiously presume to reduce the serious study of science and technology into political piffle, the cynical likes of Mr. Pratt would do themselves and the rest of us great good by unearthing and celebrating the genuinely genius work and achievements of true Ghanaian scientists, scholars and technocrats around the world.

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