[ 2021-02-25 ]

Overthrow of CPP truncated Ghana’s national development – CPP Chairperson
Nana Akosua Sarpong Kumakuma, Chairperson,
Convention People’s Party (CPP), says the
overthrow of Dr Kwame Nkrumah and the CPP
government on February 24, 1966 truncated
Ghana’s national development.

She said 55 years down the line, the Ghanaian
economy was just moving in circles “not able to
achieve much as compared to achievements chalked
under the CPP government”.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency, she said the
CPP government had a clear plan to ensure
development through the creation of jobs,
factories, provision of good roads and the
motivation and education of Ghanaians to solve
their own problems, which were still evident to
all.

She said the 1966 shameful act was not a fight
just against the Nkrumaist political party but
against national development and human progress
which had led to challenges and untold suffering
of Ghanaians.

She said to commemorate the day, party members and
executives held a ceremony at Saltpond in the
Central Region, where Dr Nkrumah planted a tree on
the founding of the CPP as a symbolic
representation of the Party, saying, “the tree
is here standing strong”.

She urged politicians to rededicate themselves to
national development and the dignity of the
Ghanaian.

On February 24, 1966, while Dr Nkrumah was on a
state visit to North Vietnam and China, his
government was overthrown in a violent coup
d'état led by members of the national military
and the police, with backing from destabilizing
and exploitative foreign interests.

The conspirators, led by General Joseph Arthur
Ankrah, named themselves the National Liberation
Council and ruled as a military junta for three
years.

Dr Nkrumah did not learn of the coup until he
arrived in China. He stayed in Beijing for four
days and Premier Zhou Enlai treated him with
courtesy.

He never returned to Ghana, but he continued to
push for his vision of African unity and
projection of the African personality, and lived
in exile in Conakry, Guinea, as the guest of
President Ahmed Sékou Touré, who made him
honorary co-president of that country until his
demise in 1972.

Source - GNA

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