Accra, Sept. 21, GNA - Dr Vladimir Antwi-Danso of the Legon Centre for International Affairs (LECIA) on Wednesday stated that the peaceful and successful development of Ghana was intrinsically linked to the fortunes of the Convention People's Party (CPP).
He stated: "Ghana is now radarless, compassless. Our twenty years of experiment strapped in the liberal paradigm has created a state of stagnation and decline".
He was delivering a paper at the 96th anniversary celebrations of the birth of Kwame Nkrumah, organized by the Patriots, a wing of the CPP, in Accra.
The public lecture on the topic: "The Man Kwame Nkrumah", formed part of activities to mark the celebrations. Dr Antwi-Danso, who observed that there was one basic thing lost on everyone within the development equation, and noted that the development was controlled by four basic imperatives that move in concert.
These factors, he enumerated to include resources-natural, human and capital, socio-historical path trodden so far, the international system at any given time and the kind of domestic politics, especially, the elite world view.
He observed that Nkrumah understood these factors, hence, his crave then for a domestic political consensus for insulating Ghana's nascent economy from the vagaries of the international system, and his quest to use the resources the country had in forms that would be internationally acceptable.
Dr Antwi-Danso said Ghana had no choice but to learn from and follow the path blazed by Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, who gave the country the initial development impetus.
He said the golden age of business, mooted by the current government, had turned into what he termed "diamond age of importation", because business was virtually buying and selling.
He noted that indiscipline had captured the youth because that was what the "obnoxious" revolution taught them, saying, "They are idle and expect manna to fall from heaven. They are with no inspirers or leaders; nothing in the economy motivates them".
Dr Antwi-Danso stated that a government that understood these factors of development and is able to tackle the problem would be deemed to be closer to Nkrumah's path, adding that, government intervention in the economy was very much needed, than the recourse to the private sector.
He noted that nation building after independence, was a problem because of the colonial grid, which has been the bane of most developing countries and is still the battle unfolding in Nigeria and most African countries.
Kwame Nkrumah, he said understood that development choice was a problem because of the nature of colonialism, which was exploitative and degrading, where there was no entrepreneurial capacity built in Africa and where no infrastructure and industrial base was established. However, Nkrumah had an answer, when he stated that capitalism was too complicated a system for a newly independent nation and thus, prescribed the move towards a socialist society".
The reason, he noted, why Nkrumah and most independent African countries chose the non-capitalist path of development was due to lack of entrepreneurial capacity, poverty levels, government capacity and obligation, backwardness in education and managerial enterprise and the example of the socialist economies.
He said Nkrumah's absence has rather created a ruinous economy based upon the dictates of those who have vested interest in keeping the developing worlds stagnant and called on government to make a recourse to Nkrumah's ideology of the State playing the most important role in the economy.
Touching on the topic of the lecture, which Dr Antwi-Danso said was very appropriate since only a few people bother to really know the man, Nkrumah, whom many demonized as a communist carnivore, a merciless tyrant, a despot with an insatiable quest for power, a gullible spindrift, who mismanaged the nation's economy, an anti-imperialist who created conditions for the West to hate Ghana and Africa.
Contrarily, he said, Nkrumah has been eulogized as a messiah, a man who never dies; or a man of vision with a focused mission; one who lived years ahead of his time; a man with courage and temperament; an action man, the African emancipator; leader and inspirer of the Black World; the man with the big brain, who shook the world with his explosive demands for freedom on behalf of the African and all oppressed people throughout the world.
Dr Antwi-Danso thus called on the CPP to re-invent Nkrumah, to really understand the dialectics of history and nature if the party ever wanted to win power again, adding that, it was not just sufficient to mention Nkrumah but the adoption of his strategies.
"Unless the CPP re-crafts its ideological message; unless this message is clear, unambiguous and captures the imagination of the youth; unless the CPP purges itself of the charlatans, the empty demagogues and moles; unless the CPP knows who are the real enemies and who have vested interest in keeping the CPP stagnant, unimpressive and decaying; unless the CPP invests in grass roots organization with a vision; and finally, unless the leadership itself are prepared to learn, nothing good will come out" he sated.
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