Don’t impose JB Danquah on Ghanaians – Frema Busia cautions Akufo-Addo

Nana Frema Busia, a daughter of former Prime Minister KA Busia, has advised President Nana Akufo-Addo to not in anyway impose his uncle Joseph Boakye Danquah on Ghanaians and reassert the supremacy of the UGCC by commemorating August 4, the day of its inauguration in 1947 as as a national holiday that celebrates the 'real' and exclusive “Founders” of Ghana.

According to her, an insightful analysis of Ghana's political history reveals that Dr Danquah, envisaged the ambition of wearing a 'crown of happiness’ in a unified nation equivalent to a “child” that was to be born.

Liberating the territories of the Gold Coast including British Togoland was Dr JB Danquah’s most endearing dream and focus in life.

As captured in Dr Danquah’s own words: “Since my energy is dangerously limited and since my life is dangerously short, and since I would rather achieve a bit, however little, than attempt many things on a broad scale, I have made it my aim to attain satisfaction, if I were to realize my dream of a Gold Coast nation before my death. As we say in the vernacular: 'Man is sent into this world to do a bit, not to do all' [onipa beyee bi wammeye ne nyinaa]'", wrote Dr J. B. Danquah on 7th March 1952.

In her latest article titled “The Danquah versus Nkrumah unreconciled feud: A Ghana problem,” Frema Busia stated that Dr JB Danquah is part of a group of several actors in a joint and later split convention that collaborated with others operating separately to create a groundswell movement of the chiefs, the youth, and peoples in an initiated collective process of freedom from colonial rule.

She said colonial notes from British archives give us a distinct perspective on Dr Danquah’s political career to broaden the scope of his projected public profile.

Frema wrote that JB Danquah on January 9, 1960, made a controversial statement thus, “When independence was achieved, the Convention People's Party “CPP” had not been formed. The inauguration of independence took place when CPP was in power, but the priest who baptises a child, is not by any chance the child’s parents.”

She noted that “when Dr Kwame Nkrumah and the CPP 'captured or kidnapped' so to speak, Dr Danquah's 'Self-Government NOW' battle cry, this was in part Dr Danquah's response which sheds further light on his most endearing and dedicated dream… ‘Sir Kwame…The Ghana of which I dreamt before you came, is not a hell of destruction but an earth of discontent and rational struggle and in the end a crown of happiness. [Dr J. B. Danquah 25th December 1949].”

She added, “the philosophy of Dr Danquah, that Ghana’s Independence was achieved before the CPP was formed makes the inaugural date of the UGCC August 4th, the effective date of the achievement of independence and Dr Danquah as the national President whose inaugural speech becomes the imputed independence declaration, hence the August 4th Founders day celebration newly introduced.”

Nana Frema Busia, however, indicated that instituting September 21 and August 4 as national holidays to celebrate founder(s) of Ghana is an unnecessary distraction and hence called for its removal.

She wrote further, “whether the late former President Prof John Evans Atta Mills's enunciation of a public holiday on 21st September to honour Dr Nkrumah's birthday as sole founder's day was a political ploy to entrench the NDC's Western Region gains and NDC takeover of CPP votes nationwide or a genuine appreciation of the Osagyefo, it was an unnecessary gesture which opened up a deep gnashing unhealed Danquah/UGCC wound that was as non-representative and divisive of a collective independence effort as your Founders' Day equalization of August 4th to put a balm and bandage over a 'malady without cure.'"

“In my view, Dr Nkrumah who has been variously honoured and had 'a work and happiness for beautiful Ghana' adage does not need an idle holiday to his credit when that vision of a working happy Ghana is in disarray. We should Hashtag drop both 21st Sept and 4th August’ founder(s) day as futile bitter holiday pills… The founder(s) day is an unnecessary distraction [to] national life. A not so happy and haphazard, rather than a beautiful Ghana, has been duly celebrating an all-inclusive actual Independence Day of 6th March 1957 for at least 50 years prior to the founder(s) day advent without much ado,” she reiterated.

Read below Nana Frema Busia's article