If There Is Any Thing You Cannot Take Away From Nkrumah; It Is The Founding Of Ghana

Ever since the government of the late Professor John Evans Atta Mills made 21st September 2009 a holiday to honour Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah as the founder of Ghana, which subsequently came to be christened as Founder’s Day, it has sparked a lot of reactions from people across the length and breadth of Ghana, with some favourable towards the change and others not. It’s worth it to recount that Founder’s Day was a holiday in Ghana until it was abrogated by the National Liberation Council (NLC) in 1966.

Even though it is evident that the NDC government effected the change for opportunistic reasons, it is however true that Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah remains the founder of Ghana. What I mean by opportunistic reasons is that the NDC did so, not because they were Nkrumahists but because they wanted to pay lip service to Nkrumah in order to enhance their temporal grip over the Nkrumahist grassroots support base (the dominant political support base in Ghana) of which they have been deceiving since 1992, to maintain their political space in Ghana.

The NDC is a fake Nkrumahist political party because being Nkrumhist transcends sentimentalism. You don’t become a Muslim just by proclaiming you adore the holy prophet Muhammad, you need to follow the sunnah of the holy of the holy prophet Muhammad. In fact, that makes you a Muslim. Just like the above illustration, you become an Nkrumahist only when you pay heed to the ideological policies followed and taught by Kwame Nkrumah and more importantly implementing them when in government.

Having said that and analysing the policies that were implemented by the NDC between the periods 1992-2000 and 2009-2016, you can easily determine that they were a sharp deviation from nkrumahist policies. Starting with the 1992 constitution of which they oversaw the writing and promulgation of, they openly outlawed the 1960 constitution; a book that remains an encapsulation of Nkrumah’s policies. How then can they hold themselves to be Nkrumahists?

There is an old saying that goes like this,’ the higher the monkey climbs, the more it exposes its anus. A critical examination of NPP’s actions reveals that they further, are discrediting themselves by pushing harder for a national recognition of their founding fathers as founders of Ghana. Nothing could be further away from the truth than these claims of the NPP. It’s a deliberate fabrication of history and should be resisted by all means necessary.

The commonly referred to justification for the inclusion of J.B Danquah and others, as the founders of Ghana is that they founded the UGCC which according to them started the national agitation for independence. If the formation of the UGCC is the criteria for judging who qualifies or not, to be called a founder of Ghana, then I would argue that Paa Grant should be celebrated solely as the founder of Ghana because he financed the movement from its initial stages. J.B Danquah is on record to have been collecting per diem and fuel allowance from Paa Grant before attending UGCC meetings. But what is quite amazing about the NPP is that they constantly ignore the name Paa Grant when discussing those who should be regarded as founders. It is apparent that the entire recent hullabaloo by the NPP is aimed at elevating one man to the status of Kwame Nkrumah – J.B Danquah

What the NPP should understand is that the UGCC was just an organisation on paper. It really did not get down to work before the coming of Kwame Nkrumah three months after its formation. This is precisely the summary of the Watson Commission (commission set up to investigate the 1948 riots) report. It was Nkrumah who made the UGCC a household name because unlike the founding fathers of the NPP, he was okay without ostentatious lifestyle – he organised in deep villages for the UGCC where J.B Danquah and co would never go.

Also sometimes the NPP try using the invitation extended to Nkrumah by Ako Adjei and J.B Danquah as a yardstick to discredit the basis for Founder’s Day. According to them, Nkrumah would never had come down to Ghana to fight against colonialism without the invitation, but it is worthy of note that Nkrumah wrote the first draft of his book.’ Towards Colonial Freedom’, when he was still a student in the US, so it is apparent here that Nkrumah had the liberation of Ghana and Africa at heart before he came to Ghana. With or without the invitation, Nkrumah would still have come to Ghana to fight against colonialism.

When they seem to be losing the UGCC argument, they even send themselves much more back to the days of the Fante confederation and the Aborigines Right Protection Society (ARPS) to save their faces. In as much as I respect the struggles of the mentioned organisations, it is good for me to point out the limitation of these organisations for an objective discussion to prevail. The limitation being that these organisations were more tribally than nationally oriented – the Fante confederation and ARPS were fighting to protect Fante lands, not that of Ashanti or the Northern Territories. The struggle against colonialism became nationally coordinated and oriented only with the inception of Kwame Nkrumah and the CPP.

Without Kwame Nkrumah, there would not have been a state called Ghana today. This is so because J.B Danquah advocated for a type of independence where sovereign political power would rest with the chiefs and not to a central government. Given that this had happened, Ghana today would be known as Ashanti, Ga State, the Volta, the Fanteland, the Northern Territories and many other tribal jurisdictions.

But for God being so good, J.B Danqauh was never successful with his advocacy but that still did not deter him from propagating his divisive antics. In the years leading to independence, Danquah and his colleagues in the National Liberation Movement (NLM) propagated for a federal system of government despite the country’s small territorial span and population. It was a clever attempt to undo the progress already attained in forging a new national identity and unity in Ghana. Since the Ashanti region contained the bulk of the country’s natural resource, it was thought that making the Ashanti region a federal state would suffocate the central government financially and therefore render it incapable of developing the other regions with fewer resources.

Danquah and his cohorts once more were unsuccessful because they were out-organised by Kwame Nkrumah and the CPP. The people came out in support of the unitary system of government.

And if as a result of this, Dr. Bawumia got educated for free and now has been able to become vice president of Ghana, why does the NPP thinks Ghana want owe some credits to J.B Danquah; a man who crisscrossed the moon and earth to ensure that sure that the people like Bawumia remained on the farm with mal-nutritional bodies.

They want to call founders of Ghana;
People who organised to vehemently oppose the inclusion of the volta region into Ghana.

People who boycotted the motion of destiny.
People who alongside S.G Antoh organised an armed insurrection to violently oppose the independence of Ghana.

People who out of desperation, flew to London on the eve of independence, laid down and begged the queen of England not to grant Ghana independence.

Hold on a second and just imagine how ridiculous this people sound?

J.B Danquah and the others were only the founders of the no-show ‘federal state of Ashanti’, nothing more and nothing less.

What President Akuffo Addo should know is that, as one facebook user expressed, ‘when he goes to the UN and mentions Kwame Nkrumah, everybody knows who he is talking about, but when he mentions J.B Danquah, people might probably be thinking he is the latest player in the Black Stars or something.’

4th august holiday does not move me an inch because what is written is written. The President can even choose to go to Addis Ababa to pull down the golden statue of Nkrumah or better still, erect a diamond one for his political Godfather J.B Danquah, it still would not make the latter a founder of Ghana, or elevate him to the status of Kwame Nkrumah.

By; Amodani Gariba.