Agyepong tells JJ: Teak plantations was Busia’s initiative, not Nkrumah’s

The General Secretary of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has challenged an assertion by former President Jerry Rawlings that teak plantations that were used to facilitate the rural electrification project in Ghana were started by late President Kwame Nkrumah rather than late Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia.

Agyepong’s assertion follows a recent credit given to Dr. Nkrumah for the teak plantations by former President Jerry Rawlings, when he spoke at the governing NDC’s national delegates’ congress in December last year.

Mr Rawlings made the claim when he narrated a story about how his administration relied on the teak plantations to extend electricity to most parts of the country.

Mr Agyepong, in an interview with Morning Starr host, Kafui Dey, on Tuesday, which coincided with the 43rd anniversary of the overthrow of Prof. Busia, said he was disturbed when Mr Rawlings, in his view, attempted to warp history with his claim that the teak plantations were the handiwork of Ghana’s first President, rather than Prof Busia.

According to Agyepong, it was Prof Busia, an environmentalist, that initiated the process of planting vast acres of teak plantations throughout the country.

“It was a project of Prof Busia, not Dr Nkrumah and that everybody knows is a fact. Why the former President forgot that or whether he deliberately did so, I think only he can [tell]; I hope he really simply forgot, made a mistake,” the former flagbearer-Aspirant told Kafui Dey.