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10.05.2018 Feature Article

Ewe Project or Ghana Project, Okudzeto-Ablakwa?

Okudzeto-AblakwaOkudzeto-Ablakwa
10.05.2018 LISTEN

I read Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa’s rather pathetic article captioned “Ablakwa Writes: The True Documented, Authoritative History of University of Ghana” CitiNewsRoom.com / Modernghana.com 5/10/18) with amused contempt. With amused contempt because, as usual, the 30-something-year-old National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for North-Tongu, in the Volta Region, sought to significantly devalue the seminal and indispensable contributions of the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics, namely, Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye Danquah. But the young and exuberant former Deputy Education Minister only, predictably, ended up exposing himself to unnecessary ridicule.

For those of our readers who may not know much about this exuberant and quite articulate, albeit semiotically vacuous scofflaw and political upstart, Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa is one of those rabidly anti-Danquah leftist politicians who claim Ghana’s first postcolonial leader, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, to be the “Founding Father” of the first Sub-Saharan (Gee, do I hate this term!) African country to be granted its political sovereignty by any of the erstwhile European colonial powers on the African continent. But, somehow, although the events and processes leading to both the declaration of Ghana’s independence and the establishment of our country’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana, entailed the collective contributions of all able-bodied Ghanaians, Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa and his rump-Convention People’s Party (r-CPP) and NDC Abongo Boys and their allies have absolutely no qualms, whatsoever, calling President Kwame Nkrumah “The Founding Father of Modern Ghana.”

Ironically, when it comes to recognizing the equally seminal and vanguard contributions of Dr. Danquah, the first continental African to be awarded the Doctor of Philosophy Degree by any major Western-European academy in the 20th Century, Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa would have Ghanaians believe that, unlike Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, Dr. Danquah absolutely deserves no such accolade as “Founder of the University of Ghana.” Rather, we are advised to envisage the establishment of the University of Ghana as “The Ghana Project,” namely, the result of the collective achievements of literally all Ghanaian citizens. In reality, what Mr. Okuzdeto-Ablakwa’s rather sophomoric and logically desultory tirade seeks to do is to propagandistically highlight what may be aptly called “the Ewe Contribution to the Foundation and/or Establishment of the University of Ghana.”

In the main, Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa strenuously attempts to put Prof. Christian G. Baeta, the renowned Christian theologian, on the same pedestal with Danquah vis-à-vis the establishment of the University of Ghana. But, of course, anybody scholastically familiar with the legislative, political and material events leading to the foundation and establishment of the University of Ghana is perfectly aware of the fact that in terms of their disparate contributions to the foundation and establishment of Legon, the affectionate name of the University of Ghana, Rev. Baeta is absolutely no peer of Dr. Danquah. Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa needs to get this message loud and clear. He must also be made to fully appreciate the fact that the most authoritative history regarding the establishment of Legon was neither commissioned nor published in either 1995 or 1998, respectively.

Now, since he conveniently and opportunistically trots in the name of Prof. Robert Addo-Fening, one of Ghana’s most distinguished scholars and historians and an unimpeachable authority on Akyem-Abuakwa history, let me tell the North-Tongu’s NDC-MP what Prof. Addo-Fening, who served on the Board of Directors of the Danquah Institute with me sometime ago, had to say on this subject about 15 years ago, when this writer was locked in a heated national debate with Dr. Kwame Botwe-Asamoah, one of the firebrand Trokosi Nationalists and a pathological Nkrumah fanatic. In a letter to the editor, I believe, of the Daily Graphic, Rev. Addo-Fening categorically noted that had Dr. Danquah not staunchly and fiercely championed the movement that directly led to the establishment of the University of Ghana, the date of the founding or establishment of Ghana’s flagship academy would have occurred at least a decade later than it actually did.

We must also significantly point out the fact that the very name of the Democratic Republic of Ghana is the direct fruit of the authoritative scholarship of Dr. Danquah, more than any other Ghanaian scholar or thinker. There will, God willing, be ample time to tackle other equally significant and edifying aspects of the “Legon Story” or narrative, as well as the larger “Ghana Project,” as Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa chooses to describe the same. Suffice it, however, for me to proudly observe that the current Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof. Ebenezer Owusu, is a contemporary of mine from another great junior academy in the country, to wit, St. Peter’s Secondary School (PERSCO), Okwawu-Nkwatia. Prof. George Benneh, the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, is also my uncle-in-law. Indeed, my late parents had known Prof. Benneh since the great geographer and scholar was almost a toddler in Berekum, in the Brong-Ahafo Region. I also personally knew Dr. Ephraim Amu, the legendary composer and musicologist, and was passably familiar with Prof. Baeta.

Needless to say, if his inescapably jaundiced attempt to vacuously downplay the seminal and vanguard contribution of Dr. Danquah to the foundation and establishment of the University of Ghana is specifically aimed at preventing the well-deserved renaming of the University of Ghana after Dr. Danquah, Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa will definitely not succeed. Dr. Danquah is no less deserving of having the University of Ghana renamed in his honor and memory than having the former University of Science and Technology renamed in the honor and memory of former President Kwame Nkrumah.

And, by the way, it is not true for Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa to assert that the location of the University of Ghana in Accra, was given as an assurance to the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Agyeman-Prempeh, II, my kinsman, with the promise of a second university being established in Kumasi in the offing. To be certain, in the heated debate that led to the establishment of the University College of Ibadan, which forced Dr. Danquah to expedite the movement for the establishment of the University College of Ghana, or Gold Coast, as the country was known at the time, some 7 months later, the Asantehene found this devious arrangement of the British colonialists to be perfectly in keeping with the geographically expansive tenets of the so-called British West Africa.

It was Danquah who convinced Otumfuo Agyeman-Prempeh, II, that Ghana, as relatively small as it was geographically, nevertheless, had its only distinctive national character and temperament that needed to be preserved, codified and promoted with the establishment of a major tertiary academy. This is partly why Dr. Danquah, and not Prof. Baeta, deserves to have Legon renamed in his memory and honor.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
May 10, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]

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