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23.09.2018 Feature Article

But Nkrumah Was Not a Peaceful Man

But Nkrumah Was Not a Peaceful Man
23.09.2018 LISTEN

This mythological Nkrumah hagiography has got to be healthily demystified if the present generation of Ghanaian youths are to fully and realistically appreciate why we find ourselves in the dire economic straits in which we find ourselves today. The fact of the matter is that most of the post-Nkrumah Ghanaian leaders doggedly and blindly and scandalously pursued the same faux-socialist policies that landed us in this no-win socioeconomic rut from which we have yet to fully and thoroughly extricate ourselves. And the tragic reality of our situation is that the sinister forces of rankly corrupt faux-socialist scam-artists are at work and still strong and alive and ready to reassert themselves with a populist vengeance on the least available opportunity to irreversibly land us in an Economic Hell Hole, one that is worse than the Dantesque Shithole conceived for us by US President Donald John Trump.

These sinister forces who are presently led by the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), so-called, shamelessly preach “social democracy,” but their real godforsaken agenda is immitigable kleptocracy. These “Cash-and-Carry” bank-bankrupting socialists preach social equality but would virulently impugn President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s fee-free Senior High School Policy Initiative as one that flagrantly violates Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution. One of them, affectionately called “The Nadowli-Kaleo Methuselah,” even recently threatened to see Nana Akufo-Addo in court over this most progressive quality-of-life improvement initiative. Anyway, the event that inspired this column was a news article captioned “Tortured, Headless Male Body Found in Suspected Ritual Murder” (MyNewsGh.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/23/18).

Being the grandnephew of the legendary and immortalized “Three-Counties’ Chieftain” (aka Ammantuomiensahene), Nana Akyea-Mensah (aka Barima Ohemeng), I could not help but be drawn to such a sensational headline. I am still struggling to come to terms with the recent landmark celebration of the 75th Anniversary Re-Union of Asanteman and Okyeman in the wake of the seismic passing of the globally renowned Okyenhene, Osagyefo Nana Sir Ofori-Atta, I, in 1943. But, of course, the same milestone also marked the 74th Anniversary of the brutal assassination – then anthropologically described by the British colonial rulers as a “Ritual Murder” – of Nana Akyea-Mensah. And so for me, the entire otherwise historic reunion came, in some serious respects, with mixed feelings. The irony here, though, is that I have been working assiduously over the past decade, largely behind the scenes and through my columns, to see just such a momentous event happen in our lifetime.

Still, what especially drew my attention to the aforementioned news story was the rather lurid suggestion by the writer that, somehow, there was something unbecoming of the fact that somebody would be decapitated (or beheaded) in the same region and area of the ancestral moorings of Ghana’s first postcolonial President, on the very day marked down the country’s calendar as the official birthday of Mr. Kwame Nkrumah. Maybe the news reporter never heard of such terror-charged phrases as “One O’clock Fever” and “Preventive Detention.” This was the first thought that crossed my mind. The fact of the matter is that President Nkrumah was endowed with an indisputable modicum of greatness and, some may even say, genius. But Kwame Nkrumah was not the least bit the sort of peaceful and kind personality that the reporter sought to convey in his reportage.

I also thought about the Mythology of Kankan (Guinea-Conakry) Nyame. But this was, of course, largely more anecdotal than canonical reality, although some of those who were intimately familiar with the personality and widely alleged / rumored insecurities of the man would readily attest to the fact that Kwame Nkrumah was not the least bit above orgiastic indulgence in questionable “paganistic” rituals. Then also, those who were either too young or not born at the time woefully fail to realize – And who can blame them? – that the entire 15-year period under the rulership of the Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP) was far more turbulent and downright violent and bloodier than Ghana under the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party with just about a quarter of the country’s current population.

And, by the way, did the writer of the above-referenced rather brief news story ever hear of the name of Dr. JB Danquah and the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison, in particular the Condemned Cell Block of the Nsawam Prison?

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 23, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]

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