Nkrumah’s son fights Rawlings

Dr Onsy Nathaniel Kwame Nkrumah, son of late President Kwame Nkrumah, says he finds it hard to understand why Jerry John Rawlings, during his tenure of office as head of state, failed to investigate the alleged murder of Rev Francis Akwasi Amoako, a renowned Christian cleric.

Rev Akwasi Amoako, founder of the Resurrection Power Ministry – now Resurrection Power and Living Bread Ministries International – was reported to have been killed by two junior military officers in 1990 at the Winneba Junction in the Central Region, when he was returning from a Christian revival programme in Takoradi with the Tagoe Sisters gospel artistes.

The late evangelist, who was 42 years old at the time of his alleged murder, was said to have been critical of the shortcomings of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) administration headed by Mr Rawlings – which metamorphosed into the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in 1992.

The officers were said to have rammed their military truck into the vehicle of the evangelist and later allegedly stabbed him to death after their earlier attempt at crushing him to death had failed.

Twenty-five years after that gruesome incident, Dr Nkrumah still cannot fathom why Mr Rawlings, “under whose watch the murder took place, has not been able to tell the family of the late man of God what actually caused his death.”

For him, it wasn’t a motor accident that killed Rev Akwasi Amoako, as the government claimed at the time.

He alleged that the soldiers intentionally killed the pastor.

“He was killed by a military truck running into him and when he came out two military officers rushed on him and stabbed him,” he told DAILY GUIDEin an interview on the sidelines of the 25th anniversary celebration of Rev Akwasi Amoako’s passing-on. The ceremony took place in Accra on Tuesday.

He posed, “My question to Rawlings is first of all, who ordered the killing of the man; because the officers who killed him at the time were junior ranks and could not have acted on their own orders.”

Dr Nkrumah noted, “He was the only person killed at the time. The two girls escaped because they were not intended to be killed. The soldiers had orders to kill Rev Akwasi Amoako only.”

Reports of military killings were not uncommon during the reign of Mr Rawlings, an ex-military leader.

Dr Nkrumah claimed the soldiers killed pastor Amoako because “they saw him as a thorn in the flesh of the government of the day; but what they really didn’t know was that he loved Rawlings and was only correcting him and his followers, and nothing else.”

He is therefore demanding concrete answers from former President Jerry John Rawlings as to why he failed to investigate the matter “to bring to book those who perpetrated the act.”