[ 2013-06-29 ]

Nkrumah Is Decidedly Passe, Uncle Annan!
When I say that I respect Ghana's foremost
diplomat of global distinction and former
Secretary-General of the United Nations
Organization (UN), I radically understate the
truth; the fact of the matter is that I actually
revere the man. And this is why I find it to be
rather curious to read the following statement
from the man who definitively convinced me,
sometime ago, that President Kwame Nkrumah was
irredeemably and irrefutably a bad news item for
Ghana at the time that he emerged and
megalomaniacally commandeered the political
landscape of the erstwhile Gold Coast.

Nkrumah would eventually hold almost each and
every one of his countrymen and women hostage,
even as he paradoxically and pontifically preached
a stentorian Gospel According To Immediate
Continental African Unification Under The Manifest
Ideology of Nkrumaism.

Well, in his just-published article, titled
"Ghana's Second Chance" (See Ghanaweb.com
6/28/13), Ghana's sole Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
draws the following conclusion: "In 1957, Kwame
Nkrumah said, 'We are prepared to pick it (Ghana)
up and make it a nation that will be respected by
every nation in the world.'

Let us live up to Kwame Nkrumah's aspirations
today and show the world what we are capable of."
Needless to say, Ghana's first postcolonial
premier was not called a "Show Boy" for nothing;
the man almost exclusively lived for the
glorification of his audience and spectators, not
the intrinsic essentiality of what he publicly and
histrionically claimed to stand for and/or
represent.

At any rate, the first problem that I have with
the forgoing Nkrumah quote, is the fact that even
by his own authoritative and eloquent testimony,
clearly gleaned from the article in reference,
Kwame Nkrumah doggedly pursued a vicious and
virtually hermetic politics of exclusivity, rank
corruption and immitigable vindictiveness.

On the latter score, this is exactly what Mr.
Annan means when he makes the following
irrefutably poignant observation: "Elections are a
means of regulating political rivalries in the
broader interest of the nation.

As the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy
and Security highlighted in its 2012 report, the
importance of elections with integrity lies in the
legitimacy they confer on the winners and the
security they ensure for the losers. Democracy is
not about winner-takes-all; it is about winner
serving all his or her people and shoring up the
rule of law."

In fine, why should any levelheaded patriotic
Ghanaian live up to the aspirations and standards
of Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, even if Ghana's infamous and
extortionate dictator did not care to live up to
these aspirations and standards, however laudable,
himself? For my part, I prefer to think that every
generation is mandated to configure its own
roadmap of destiny and futuristically live up to
the same.

I also feel virulently revulsed by the Kenyan edge
which the distinguished Chancellor of the
University of Ghana anchors into the thrust of his
argument, because I sincerely don't believe that
justice was done to Mr. Raila Odinga, although I
am not very heavily emotionally invested in the
patent raw deal handed him by the Kenyan Supreme
Court .

My only regret is that the Indemnity Clauses
inserted into Ghana's 1992 Republican Constitution
preempts justice-seeking patriotic Ghanaians from
doing unto Mr. Rawlings and his criminal National
Democratic Congress Gang, what the AFRC and PNDC
did to Gen. I. K. Acheampong and his associates.

Editor's Note:
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

Source - GNA

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