The Battle for the ownership of the soul of Ghana

Undoubtedly, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s  60th Independence Anniversary speech has opened debate on who owns the soul of Ghana, a fight  I    find it difficulty to comprehend , considering the status of the country after 6 decades of independence.

But do   we  really need this, when after many years of independence from the British, we still import virtually everything including tooth pick  into the country, something our leaders, particularly those spending their energies on this trivial historic event must be ashamed of. Although I was not born at the time Ghana gained  her independence, I was taught in History class that, apart from Dr Kwame Nkrumah who proclaimed Ghana’s independence on 6th March 1957, there were others who also  made that dream a reality.

And that is a fact which can never be distorted! That part of our country’s independence story can  only be come distorted if  we  credit the struggle for  our  freedom from  the British to only  Dr.  Kwame Nkrumah without acknowledging those whose contributions also made it a success too.  Therefore  I found nothing wrong with President Akufo-Addo’s  speech when he took the trouble to narrate how our  independence struggle started.

Historians will you that histories are written from perspectives so perhaps, what the President sought  to do on that occasion was to  write  his speech from nationalist perspective. It therefore makes no sense the attack on him over claims that,  he distorted the historical facts of Ghana’s independence just to please his ancestry.

President Akufo-Addo  during Ghana’s 60th independence anniversary at the Black Stars Square  in Accra last week said, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) , forebears of his current party, New Patriotic Party (NPP)  “met to demand independence from the British and 70 years after that event, one still marvels at the clarity of thought and the passion that they displayed.

“Some of the names of that momentous day have survived in our written history and folk memory. Five of them are on our Ghanaian currency: Joseph Boakye Danquah; Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey; William Ofori-Atta; Ebenezer Ako-Adjei; and Edward Akufo-Addo. Kwame Nkrumah, the sixth of the Big Six on the currency, was to join them later”.

But  this historical narration by the President has since then incurred the wrath of the Convention  People’s Party (CPP)  whose founding  father was Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. The CPP thinks that, it was  a deliberate attempt by the president not only to minimise the role of Kwame Nkrumah in the independence struggle of the country, but also to take up arms against the history of the  country.

Fine, the CPP may have a valid point there, but is it necessary now? What has the leadership of the party done since the overthrow of Nkrumah to consolidate the successes he (Dr. Nkrumah ) chalked for this country. All the monumental achievements of Dr Nkrumah are gradually losing their significance in the country’s political history, probably apart from the attainment of independence which he spearheaded.

And indeed if there, is anything  worthy for the CPP and the Nkrumah’s loyalists   to fight for , It is rather not the soul  of Ghana, but the survival of the CPP , and how the  fragmented groups of the party can come together and repackage the party to make it a winning party. That is what the leadership of the party must do, and not this noise about who must be celebrated as the founder of the country.

The performance of the CPP  in national elections since the inception of this fourth Republuc has been very abysmal and I don’t Dr Kwame  will be happy wherever he is to see his party losing its significance.

By Atta Kwaku Boadi