Kwame Nkrumah is the greatest leader we’ve ever had – Latif Abubakar

Chief Executive Officer of the African Festival, Latif Abubakar, has described Dr. Kwame Nkrumah as the greatest leader Ghana and Africa have ever had.

The playwright admitted that Nkrumah is the best leader we’ve ever had, and he is not the only one with this opinion.

He referenced the BBC’s Africa’s Man of the Millennium, which the late Nkrumah won 40 years after his death.

To him, that was evidence that Nkrumah was indeed the best leader we’ve ever had in Ghana and across Africa.

He said this while speaking to the media after the premiere of Africa’s biggest theatrical venture, “The Second Coming of Nkrumah.”

“I believe Nkrumah is the best leader we’ve had. Not just me, you remember even in the play we talked about the fact that when Nkrumah was far gone, forty years after his death, when the BBC decided to do a vote on who is Africa’s man of the millennium, in 2000, Madella was alive and other people were alive, but Nkrumah came out victorious with a huge margin of votes. It tells you that a lot of people believe that Nkrumah was a great leader. So enacting the story of such a personality to promote social and behavioural change was in the right order, he argued.

The play premiered at the Accra International Conference Centre on December 15, 2023.

The African Festival is the biggest annual migration and gathering of Africans across the globe to celebrate heritage and culture and ignite the spirit of Pan-Africanism to champion the change that Africa needs.

The premiere was in partnership with the Ministry of Tourism, Arts, and Culture, UNESCO, and sponsored by Fidelity Bank.

The play had a cast of 150 ace actors who exhibited their craft to the audience, who received special invitations to watch the play.

The play was put together by Ghanaian playwright Latif Abubakar.

The one-hour-forty-five-minute production, “The Second Coming of Nkrumah,” forms part of a bigger five-day African festival initiative that will draw audiences from all walks of life in the diaspora and Africa.

Abubakar said the annual event was being supported by the UN Resident Coordinator, Charles Abani, UNESCO, with the biggest support coming from the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, and Fidelity Bank.

The cast re-enacted the roles of some of the founding fathers of Africa.

They include Ghana’s first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah; Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie; Kenya’s first President and anti-colonial activist, Jomo Kenyatta; the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba; the first President of Guinea, Ahmed Sékou Touré, and Tanzanian anti-colonial activist and former President, Julius Nyerere.

The other Pan-African freedom fighters, such as the American Baptist Minister and civil rights activist, Martin Luther King Jnr; an American sociologist and Pan-African civil rights activist, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois; a leading Pan-Africanist journalist and author, George Padmore, and Jamaican political activist, Marcus Garvey, among others and what they each stood for, we’re also celebrated.

The play will be open to the public from December 28 to 30, 2023.