NaCCA Sets the Records Straight as It Ought to

At long last, responsible adults have taken charge of the glorious House of Modern Ghana. After more than 20 years of deliberately and criminally bungling both the qualitative contents and epistemic viability of the country’s hitherto globally enviable intellectual culture in the spurious name of “Revolution” by, first, the Rawlings-led so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) junta and later, again, the Rawlings-founded and chaperoned faux-civilian National Democratic Congress (NDC) political party. Finally, Ghanaians, under the competent and visionary leadership of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the neoliberal market-oriented New Patriotic Party (NPP) have begun what may be aptly described as the epochal Renaissance or rejuvenation of our citadels of knowledge, to wit, our public education system at all levels of learning (See “Gov’t Explains Perceived Snubbing of Nkrumah in New Curriculum” Modernghana.com 4/17/19).

Ghanaians must also bear in mind the total dismantling and thorough destruction of our once British-modeled progressively elite public-school system, then described as uncontestably one of the best on the African continent, if not the very best, as we head towards the 2020 general election season. No longer are we going to be the laughing stock of even some of the former non-Ghanaian intellectual and cultural beneficiaries of the country’s enviable immediate post-independence period. The unhealthy wholesale cannibalization and deliberate and systematic falsification of the authentic historiography of the country would shortly become a veritable relic of the past. It has unquestionably taken too long for us to auspiciously arrive back at where we always belonged. But that Ghanaians continue to massively suffer from the gross falsification of and the pathological politicization of our history curriculum, in particular, after more than two generations of independence, is what we ought to worry about.

The preceding notwithstanding, it is likely to take at least another generation or the better part of a quarter-century before Ghanaians, once again, arrive at the coveted level where we were during both the Transitional and the Immediate Post-Independence Era. The decision boldly taken by the National Council for Curriculum (Development) and Assessment (NaCCA), to systematically begin the official/formal documentation of Modern Ghanaian History from the canonical beginnings, must be heartily and unreservedly applauded. But it is also perfectly understandable for those who have been most fanatically affected, hurt and traumatized by such deception, falsification and politicization of the country’s history to hysterically raise the sort of questions that some of these casualties of yesteryear’s curricular propaganda are presently raising, in the salutary wake of the mnemonic restoration of the country to its former great and enviable self.

Hopefully, at the end of this yeomanly project of psychological and intellectual and cultural restoration and rehabilitation, it would not be too late for those near-irreparably damaged by what may be aptly termed as the “Epistemically Lost Generation” (ELG) to be successfully cured of their Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD). Inevitably, as well as inescapably, much has been lost that may never be completely salvaged or meaningfully retrieved. The good news, here, of course, is the fact that what lies ahead is far more expansive and greater and much healthier and richer than that which has been callously and unconscionably allowed to go to waste by the “Gustatory Revolutionaries.” For, at the end of the day, most key players of the “Revolution,” such as occurred in our country from the late 1970s on, were inordinately and thievishly fixated on self-aggrandizement and plain and raw theft. Today, it is these so-called yesteryear’s faux-revolutionaries who own most of our taxpayer-underwritten state-owned real-estate properties.

Then, there is the scandalous story of one of these “Summer Revolutionaries,” in the immortalized words of Thomas Paine, the great British-born American revolutionary, who fiercely and farcically fought to be gifted one of these state-owned properties on the quixotic grounds of terminal occupancy as a former President of Ghana. Thankfully, the righteous indignation of some of us hardworking and responsible Ghanaian citizens forced this brazen robber-baron to give up his scandalous attempt to cheaply and thievishly milk the morally upright and justice-loving Ghanaians.

Nkrumah is ineluctably significant to the Middle-Period of Modern Ghanaian History, that is, the epochal period from late 1947 to 1970 or immediately after the overthrow of the Convention People’s Party. So, one expects that Nkrumah and his post-1954 political associates and major opponents would dominate the curricula of both the Junior and Senior High Schools; with junta leaders like Generals Kotoka, Ankrah, Afrifa, Acheampong, Akuffo and Rawlings and their associates bringing up the rear, as it were. I have not read any of the so far published textbooks, but I have every reason to believe that Ghanaian public education is fast on its way to being reckoned to be remarkably competent and even formidable among its counterparts around the globe, as it ought to.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
April 17, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]