CPP Has No Seized Assets to Be Returned

The original caption of this column was “Like Father, Like Daughter”; and it was because the subject of discussion regarded the pathological narcissism of Ms. Samia Christina Yaba Nkrumah that strikingly reflected that of her late father and Ghana’s first postcolonial leader, President Kwame Nkrumah (See “Samia Nkrumah: Seized CPP Assets Must Not Be Returned” MyJoyOnline.com / Modernghana.com 9/21/18). We have discussed this very subject before, so I do not intend to waste time unnecessarily re-threading and/or re-treading the same. It has to do with the purported assets of the Nkrumah-led proto-Convention People’s Party (CPP) that were allegedly seized by the Col. E K Kotoka-led junta of the National Liberation Council (NLC) that legitimately ousted the Nkrumah dictatorship on February 24, 1966.

You see, having declared Ghana a one-party State and the party’s leader President-for-Life, against the express popular wishes of the overwhelming majority of the effectively disenfranchised Ghanaian electorate, the CPP and its leaders had absolutely no legal and/or legitimate claim to any assets which they now scandalously claim were, somehow, illegally cannibalized or expropriated by the NLC. Instead, what Ghanaians ought to be talking about is the number and monetary value of the assets and properties, as well as liquid cash, stolen from the taxpayer and the public purse and the most effective means of retrieving the same with interest and punitive damages for the benefit of the real owners. We need to also emphasize the fact that by the eve of February 24, 1966, even the present Ghana National Flag has been effectively proscribed by the one-party Convention People’s Party National Assembly or Parliament.

What this clearly means is that the CPP leaders had absolutely no respect for the laws of our land, which is why it is patently absurd for the likes of Ms. Nkrumah to be talking about any CPP-owned assets that were purportedly seized by the NLC. But, of course, what is even more laughable about Ms. Nkrumah’s present argument is her predictably narcissistic contention that the leadership of the present rump-Convention People’s Party has no legitimacy, whatsoever, and thus does not deserve to have the party’s chimerical assets returned to it. The obvious subtext here is that, somehow, only Nkrumah’s heirs, like Ms. Nkrumah, a former rump-CPP Parliamentarian and party Chairperson, have a legitimate right to the retrieval of such assets. We are also told that among the targeted properties being laid claim to are the Ministry of Information Building in Accra, and the Brong-Ahafo Regional Police Command Building.

What those of us avid students and scholars of Ghanaian history and political culture can credibly and confidently attest to is the fact that it was the proto-CPP rather whose leadership cannibalized or seized these bona fide State assets that were originally acquired with public funds as well as the Ghanaian taxpayer’s money. Ms. Nkrumah’s trademark proprietary arrogance, an indisputable mirror-image of her late father’s, is what fascinates me here more than anything else: The very curious and scandalous idea that, somehow, it is the half-Egyptian Ms. Samia Nkrumah who has the peremptory right and prerogative to determine precisely who qualifies to be classified as a “legitimate CPP leader.” Somebody ought to inform and, perhaps, even enlighten Ms. Nkrumah that the politically benighted days of the 1950s and 1960s are well behind us.

At any rate, other than being lucky to have electorally carried the people with him to reassert the inviolable sovereignty of the erstwhile Gold Coast from British colonial rule, the destiny of our country is the collective handicraft of all Ghanaian leaders and citizens. Nkrumah just happens to have been only one of the legions of standout leaders of Ghana’s pre-independence liberation struggle. This is the plain and unvarnished truth of our collective historical identity and destiny.

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 21, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]