Editorial: Nkroful, Nkrumah & Tourism

The Chronicle newspaper’s two part presentation on the state of Nkroful, home village of Ghana’s first president Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and of facilities that have been neglected has generated lots of debate over the last few days.

While CPP biased elements and others have roundly condemned the current government for neglecting Nkrumah’s home village as the country celebrates its fifty (50) years, others have also dismissed any attempt at “encouraging government to renovate and furnish” the private homes of past leaders.

The latter school of thought has gone further to question among others why the complainants are not talking about honouring the Ako Adjei’s and others. Listening to some of the arguments can make you sick.

Reading what we are told is the response of a Kumasi-based journalist Samson Lardi Ayenini and listening to Tv3’s Kofi Dokyi Ampaw on Radio Gold last Saturday summed up a conclusion that many of us just talk without any sober reflection. It also exemplified how as a country we all have lost the value and potential of tourism.

Ghana@50 Secretariat boss Charles Wereko Brobbey whose descriptions of the properties in Nkroful as private properties seems to have fed into Samson’s views and that of Kofi Dokyi is most unfortunate.

For how will anybody think and conclude that developing and positioning the old tomb of Nkrumah, painting and turning his room in Nkroful into a library, transforming the river side where he’s said to have joined a canoe to catch the ship to London for further education, etc, into a tourist attraction is a waste of money?

And why will anybody even suggest that the transformation of these tourist attractions should be the responsibility of the Nkrumah family and thereby classify them as private properties? Then Nkrumah’s corpse is equally a private property and should be left to his family.

Samson’s view as published by the Statesman of last Friday that “the Nyaneba House as shown in the frontpage of the Chronicle may be what is really is but is it the suggestion that government should frequent there to maintain a house occupied by responsible adults” aptly reflects the point that we sometimes just talk.

The decision to move Nkrumah’s body to Accra was a bad one, not a wise move at all, because Nkroful could and can still be packaged into a wonderful and must-visit tourist attraction despite the distance from Accra.

Does Robben Island ring a bell to anyone? There are a lot of other examples.

The matter at hand is not an issue for the current government only, but when we have persons such as Samson (a journalist), Kofi Dokyi (makes a morning appearance on TV) and Dr. Wereko Brobbey holding anti-tourism views as they have expressed, it makes things dangerous because the thinking will be that as a country, we care less about tourism even though we’ll make noise about it.

Nkrumah’s mothers house might be occupied by adults today, but it is simply because our governments and the Ghana Tourist Board have failed to turn that house; the mud house Nkrumah lived in before his sojourn abroad; the river side from where he left in a canoe; his tomb and the presidential lodge into tourist attractions that will be marketed to attract visitors.

Can anybody suggest that marketing Nkrumah’s library housed in his old home and also a riverside relaxation point with a first class lodging facility will not attract even domestic tourists?

Is the presidential lodge also a private property, Dr. Wereko Brobbey?

Ghana@50 must not necessarily be the occasion for all these, but a decision to get the facilities in shape and take tourists on a tour there wouldn’t have been bad either, and will in no way suggest that Nkrumah is the only hero of Ghana.

Kofi Dokyi Ampaw’s loud anger expressed on radio about how J. B. Danquah and co. Ako Adjei etc all helped bring independence is a moot argument. If there is a facility related to Danquah, Ako Adjei or Woyome that can be tourist attractions because of the historical importance of these persons, let’s not leave them to rot.

And please, the issue of Nkroful and its potentials as a tourist attraction cannot with all due respect be compared to any other village, even though as journalists we should bring to the fore the plight of all areas in Ghana.

The conclusion that “either the Chronicle reporters did not do a thorough, representative, comparative job as far as the many and almost same places in Ghana are concerned or they were too enthusiastic to a fault, and their story too skewed with a great many inaccuracies” is equally too enthusiastic.

But Chronicle’s claim that there are no signs showing travellers the road to Nkroful, is equally false. Even as far back as year 2000, there was a sign.

The concern is not the individual households in the town, but the structures that can and must be used, and the economic benefits will rub off the townsfolk.

Tourism sells and if government like previous ones want the Nkrumah relics in Nkroful to rot away, and/or want private persons to take them over including the abandoned lodge, please let it be known and people will be willing to transform them into wonderful tourist sites.

The complete lack of a tourism focus and the seeming absence of marketing communications experts in the planning of our Ghana@50 secretariat is affecting us greatly. There are no conscious efforts to encourage tourists to come in, and we’re not marketing our attractions, not even the Kakum walkway, or the Joseph project.

In other jurisdictions, this celebration would be led by the Tourism Ministry but even the Joseph Project appears left on the ministry with the secretariat in the distance.