Challenge status-quo – Akosah tells youth

Professor Agyemang Badu Akosah, former Director General of the Ghana Health Service and a leading member of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), has urged Ghanaian youths to challenge the status quo to ensure transformational leadership.

He noted that most youths in the country were so polarized and not willing to challenge the status quo even though their youthful nature demanded them to do so.

Prof Akosah made the remark at a public forum in Accra on Saturday, organized by the Youth Wing of the CPP to mark the nation’s Founder’s Day.

The forum, which was on the theme: “Why the 1992 constitution is a criminal imposition on Nkrumah, Ghanaians and Africans,” was attended by Madam Samia Yaba Nkrumah, the Party’s Chairperson, Council of Elders and leading figures of the party, the academia, students, pupils and the public.

Prof Akosah said: “I expect the youth of the country to come together to fight their course; the event that led to the formation of the CPP in 1949, was centered on a young man in the person of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, who was fighting the course of the ordinary people”.

He recounted that Wallace Johnson of Sierra Leone and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria were the first to declare self-government in the Gold Coast with the aim of forming a union government in British West Africa and were subsequently barred by the Colonial Authorities from entering the country.

He observed that Nkrumah led the struggle for self-government now in the then Gold Coast, which consequently led to the nation’s independence.

“The reason why some people sought to strangle Nkrumah was because he stood up for the vulnerable and the youths of the country.

“Some people who opposed him were of the mentality that their birth right was to rule this nation and their descendants still harbor the same mentality,” he stated.

He said the 1992 constitution was not a free will constitution because there were certain provisions in it that could not be altered; which he described as a Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) imposition.

Prof Akosah said the National Liberation Council decree that barred the CPP and Nkrumah and the PNDC must be expunged from the laws of Ghana.

He said Nkrumah’s overthrow was planned and executed with the help of the imperialists in the West.

Mr Ernesto K. Yeboah, Deputy Director of Communication of the CPP, called on the government to de-confiscate all assets of the Party such as the Ministry of Information Building in Accra, which was confiscated after its overthrow in 1966.

Mr Abeiku Adams, a CPP youth activist, who chaired the function, noted that the debate on who was the founder of the nation was unnecessary because history had bestowed it on Dr Nkrumah.

Other speakers include Mr Seoku Nkrumah and Mr Akil Secka, both of the Pan African Improvement Organization and Mr Fred Awah, Secretary General for All African Students Union.