Founder's Day Debate: Let Dr. Kwame Nkrumah Enjoy His Glory

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has successfully rekindled the debate over whether or not Ghana has a Founding Father or Founding Fathers. 

In an epic style, the party organised a lecture- delivered by the Speaker of Parliament, Professor Michael Aaron Ocquaye, under the topic “4^th August; Ghana’s Day of Destiny”-to celebrate the 70^th anniversary of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC). The crème de la crème of the NPP were in attendance, including President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and former president John Agyekum Kufuor.

There have been suggestions that the topic is irrelevant at this point in time, where Ghana has much more important issues to tackle than a debate over Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s status as the Founding Father of Ghana. But it is an important topic we ought to discuss, because the last thing we wanna lose is our genuine history, when everything else in the nation seems to be in disarray.

It goes without saying that the lecture is part of a well-designed NPP master plan to reduce (or perhaps entirely wipe out) the illustrious role Nkrumah played in Ghana’s independence struggles. In recent memory, President Akufo-Addo laid down the marker when he conveniently ignored Nkrumah in the 60^th anniversary Independence Day celebration speech delivered by the first gentleman of the land. 

The NPP’s utmost desire is to see the image of Nkrumah sacrificed at the expense of the Danquah-Busia tradition and her affiliates.

Amidst all this grand ploy to strip Nkrumah of his title, it has become clearly evident that the gigantic image of the Osagyefo still haunts the NPP. The NPP still doesn’t want to accept how a poor boy from Nkroful achieved what their over pampered intellectuals couldn’t achieve, even so, when this unassuming character chalked this achievement within an unprecedented period of time. 

The hatred felt by the then leaders of the UGCC, which has evolved into current day NPP is the same level of rage that the current cohort of NPP functionaries feel towards Nkrumah. As such, they are hell bent on destroying the man’s legacy.

There is the lame view that the movement for independence was initiated by the so called UGCC founding members. My simple question is, and so what? Again, fingers are pointed towards the fact that Nkrumah’s plane ticket to return from England to Ghana to serve in the capacity as secretary of UGCC was funded by the UGCC. Yet again, l ask the question, and so what? 

How many times have we not seen so many initiatives started by several persons, yet they fail to achieve their set targets? Since when is it that if you pay your child’s lorry fare to the university, then it means the degree to be awarded should be in your name? What makes the case of UGCC and its founders different? 

Yes, they started a political movement, yet it was the ingenuity of Nkrumah that won us independence. Infact, l dare so that the founders of UGCC did not believe in their capability to attain freedom for the then Gold Coast, for which reason they were hiding behind their “self government within the shortest possible time” mantra.

Nkrumah, full of vision came into the picture, and did what everyone thought was impossible. He took the game to a whole new level. What is the guarantee that UGCC would have won us independence? Even if they did, it would surely not have been the same 6^th March, 1957 Ghana Independence as we have come to know it. So why are we making noise about a possibility, whist we have a result to celebrate?

There are many other ways for individual Ghanaians to climb high, and attain a status more befitting than that of Nkrumah, in the annals of Ghana’s political history. If and when that happens, that person’s glory will be based on merits, not mere propaganda and brain washing. Until then, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah remains Ghana’s most darling boy, and for that matter, the Founder of the nation.