August 4 is to celebrate traitors - Pan Africanist laments

An organizer of the All African Peoples’ Revolutionary Party( A-ARP), Comrade Kwaku Aboagye Boampong says the establishment of Founders’ day on August 4 as a holiday is celebrating traitors who undermined the Independence struggle led by Ghana’s first President Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah.

Speaking on Radio 360’s morning flagship programme “Y3nsom” hosted by Kwame Malcolm in Takoradi, the avowed Pan Africanist wondered why people refer to Ghana’ s first President as a dictator since dictators hardly ensure all their citizens are educated as Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah did and sought to do till he was overthrown.

“UP that has turned into NPP today that UP became United Party because there were so many fragmented political parties that were sectional, regionalist in nature; one is called Muslim Association Party; what is that? Volta Peoples’ Party, Northern Peoples’ Party; how can one build a nation with such political. parties? So Nkrumah said no we will have any regional or sectional political party in this country.

If you want to become opposition to the CPP, form. a national party; that is how come.so even the opposition was made possible by Nkrumah himself; this is the man you are talking about. It is the UP that later became the Progress Party that Busia led.

Busia according to Afrifa, could not even win the election even after CPP had been banned,so he put him there; according to Afrifa himself in his book “The Coup of 1966?; that is what Afrifa wrote about Busia.

So the rest of the members of the Big Six if you analyze them well, most of them were just by virtue of association at a point in time. but in our.struggle for Independence, most of them betrayed the cause ” the A-ARP organizer bellowed.

He said most of the Big Six are not known even in Togo and said even a member of the Big Six; Obetsebi Lamptey was jailed for bomb-throwing against Osagyefo Nkrumah by the father of the sitting President Nana Akufo Addo.

He lamented about the celebrations of the Founders Day on August 4 instead of the Republic Day of July 1.

“First July makes you responsible you see the reality that you need to fend for yourself.as a nation as you are independent; self-reliance. We will not be going cup in hand around the world begging for assistance for school feeding programmes etc.

It means from today onwards we are no longer slaves, implying we have an arduous task ahead and this is the orientation young people must have that there will not be free lunch anywhere ….we must work hard to build our nation so if you tell us July 1 is no more and you want to take us to Saltpond August 4, what does it mean? When we know along the line some people betrayed the struggle; then it means you want to tell us that we need to celebrate traitors. This is not the history you want to teach young people whatever motive the President had in this was not borne out of the love for this nation but to celebrate a certain agenda which does not augur well for this nation….for Nkrumah, it is not a day that you will accord him before he is recognized; Kwame Nkrumah has paid his dues..there are more statues outside Ghana in honour of him than in Ghana; after destroying his bronze statue at the Polo Grounds in Accra, a gold statue has been erected in his honour in Ethiopia…whatever you do Nkrumah will forever be Nkrumah he did not trample on peoples’ rights but saw further than they can all see, he made more sacrifices that they all made. The sacrifices he made in this country many of them will not do today ; he used 2 shirts, one shorts and a pair of trousers to tour the country in 1948 when there were no V-8s nor land cruisers around.” Comrade Aboagye Boampoh posited.

He rebuffed claims of the host that a stand-alone day on his birthday September 21 has been set aside for him.

” It is not Nkrumah as a person it is the struggles he made, as for the man Nkrumah, he is dead and gone. It is a legacy he bestowed to us ..any country around the world that has developed at a point in time has a leader who sees their country’s resource and together with them they chart a course; Mao began in China and if you go to China, since 1949 they have not changed their political party. They have come from a very impoverished state to become a superpower in this world. Today if they sneeze America catches a cold and is nervous ..today the Chines walk chest out but we the black people we walk crestfallen as if we are lost yet our African continent is three times bigger than China; three times bigger than the United States and abundantly rich yet its citizens are poor yet the politician will put 50 cedis in a Tee Shirt and throw it to you to go vote for them…if you knew the wealth of this land , they will not insult you in that way, ” stated the unrepentant Pan African Organiser.