Was Ghana Built Out of Nkrumah’s Wallet?

He really did not say much that was either substantive or could be legitimately attributed to meticulous research documentation or erudition; and so Mr. Kweku Darko Ankrah, described by the media as a historian and researcher at the University of Ghana, cannot be taken seriously when he disputes the patently indisputable assertion that Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye Danquah is the de facto founder of the country’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana, Legon (See “University of Ghana Was Built with Cocoa Farmers’ Money; JB Danquah Not Founder – Historian” CitiNewsRoom.com / Ghanaweb.com 5/9/18).

It is not clear to me what breed of history specialist Mr. Ankrah is; but I am quite certain that he would perfectly agree with me that there existed absolutely no entity called “Ghanaian Cocoa Farmers” that either collectively or severally conceived the idea of the need for the establishment of the University of Ghana in 1948. The idea of the possibility of the establishment of an institution of higher learning or education has existed at least since 1848, with the establishment of the Presbyterian Teachers’ Training College (PTC), located at Akuapem-Akropong, in the Eastern Region, a township that was founded or settled between the late 1680s and the early 1700s by the Paramount King and people of Akyem-Abuakwa.

And so I guess one could safely say that the promotion of higher education in the country is as old and Akyem as anything else of equal substance. We can also aptly and promptly respond to Mr. Ankrah’s argument impugning the founder’s credentials of Dr. Danquah, by tersely noting that it was not wholly by accident that the British colonial administrators established the world-famous West African Cocoa Research Institute (WACRI) at Akyem-Tafo, rather than anywhere else in the country. It goes without saying that Okyeman, or Akyem-Abuakwa, was at the forefront of the establishment of the cocoa industry, which Danquah described as the Cradle of Modern Ghana’s Economy.

What the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics meant was that it was the massive cultivation and production of cocoa that brought Ghana into the orbit and ambit of the contemporary global economy. Hitherto, it had been the forcible and massive enslavement of African humanity and towards the close of the latter, the cultivation of the oil-palm industry in much of the forest regions of the so-called Gulf of Guinea. Indeed, if he were really worth his designation as a historian and a researcher, Mr. Ankrah would have known or been scholastically aware of the vanguard role that Dr. Danquah played in the promotion of the economic interests and general well-being of the Ghanaian cocoa farmer.

That was why a national association of Ghanaian cocoa farmers conferred the historic honor of “AkuafoKanea” – Lantern of the Ghanaian Cocoa Farmer – on the great philosopher and thinker at a conference in Nsawam. In other words, Dr. Danquah was equally significant and seminal in his contribution to both the foundation and establishment of the University of Ghana, as well as the foundation and establishment of the erstwhile Ghana Cocoa-Marketing Board, before the latter, the Gold Coast Cocoa-Marketing Board; and presently COCOBOD. But perhaps even more significantly, if he had any remarkable sense of his own national identity, Mr. Ankrah would have been aware of the very fundamental fact that his identity as a “Ghanaian” owes far more to the erudition and scholarship of Dr. Danquah than any other Ghanaian leader and/or statesman.

The Legon historian and researcher, so-called, would also have long realized that the presently renamed Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) was neither conceived nor established by the man after whom it was renamed. Neither did the financial resources used for the establishment of KNUST come from the wallet or personal bank account of President Kwame Nkrumah.

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