Damning Nkrumah without recourse to his times is erroneous-Dr Graham

Ho, Feb 23, GNA - Dr Yao Graham, a lawyer, has said damning the works and policies of late President Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah without recourse to the circumstances of his times would be erroneous.

He said without doubt, many of Dr Nkrumah's ideas about development still ricocheted today as plausible and the only way out of the economic doldrums in which Ghana was.

Dr Graham was delivering a lecture on efforts of Dr Nkrumah and the Convention People's Party (CPP) to transform the economy, lessons, difficulties and mistakes, as part of the "Campus Lecture" series in the 10 regions of Ghana to mark the centenary of Dr Nkrumah.

He said Dr Nkrumah's policies of the state being both an investor and regulator, which informed the setting up of state enterprises, met the expectations of leading development economists of the time.

Dr Graham said Dr Nkrumah did not dissipate the 200 million pounds left by the colonialists but used it for the accelerated development of the skills base of the populace through the expansion of educational opportunities, building of more health facilities and other infrastructure. He said the success of Dr Nkrumah's policies were tampered by the dependence on cocoa for foreign cash, poor borrowing terms, low productivity and the failure to bolster the small holders in agriculture who were the cog around which the economy revolved.

Dr Graham said when cocoa price dipped, it created difficulties for the Dr Nkrumah vision and the attendant shortages of imported food created a restive population which opened up to manipulation.

Regarding the conception of Dr Nkrumah as a socialist who did not encourage private enterprise, he said Ghana's first president had always demonstrated that he was an avowed proponent of the mixed economy, and that during his rule, no private enterprise was nationalized and that companies taken over were valued and bought.

Dr Graham, a member of Socialist International, said comparisons of Ghana having done poorly compared to Malaysia, South-Korea and Thailand among others were not contextual.

He said those Asian Economic Tigers had completely different historical circumstances which presented them with a higher pedestal to launch their economic development and also had massive support from the West. Dr Graham said what the country needed now was an economic transformation to correct the relativities that had hindered the economic development of the country all these years.

He said there were beneficiaries of the current system in which the distribution of wealth and opportunities were grossly uneven and therefore had vested interests in maintaining the status-quo.

Mr Bernard Mornah, Secretary on the Kwame Nkrumah Centenary Planning Committee, said Africa should get reparation for the slave trade under which large numbers of Africans were captured and sold into slavery to propel the economies of Europe and the Americas.

Professor Akilagpa Sawyerr, Chairman of the Committee, said the Campus Lectures had a "twofold significance-to elaborate the ideas, vision, the practice and record of Nkrumah and his times" and also that it focused towards the youth.