"...Nkrumah as a 'great man by all standards' would be very disappointed in such people for being ‘lazy thinkers’ despite receiving the best of education...", (Prof. Richard Amoako Baah, Ghanaweb, 16 Dec 2014).
We were not going to bother with a critique of Prof. Amoako Baah's recent utterances about the usefulness of the principles and ideologies underpinning Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's vision for the development of Ghana. Then we heard the Chief Psychiatrist of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Akwasi Osei, recommend during observance of the first anniversary of the Mental Health Board in Accra that all "Public office holders must undergo psychological screening." That was just two days ago, on 22 April .
Over the past 2 years, Prof. Richard Amoako Baah, the head of the History and Political Studies Department in the Faculty of Social Science, KNUST, has been making a lot of utterances about the history of Ghana and the state of public education in Ghana. Prof Amoako Baah has also been talking loosely about the leadership of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the man who led the fight for independence and won in 1957. So, when the head of a department at an Nkrumah-founded university makes unreflective, illogical, and counter-historical arguments against the Founder of Ghana, we must assess and respond when we have time.
This is our time!
Last year, on 16 December, in a Ghanaweb article sourced to Adomonline.com titled "Nkrumaists are lazy thinkers; bankrupt of ideas...", Prof. Amoako Baah wondered why in a world now:
"...completely different...(where)...even Russia, China, Vietnam, who were practicing socialism have all departed from it…'why people would still profess to believe in ideals which the person attributed to could not even offer a clear definition'...'Nkrumah himself was not consistent on his ideological stance as he sometimes claimed he was a socialist and another time, a communist…hence did what he thought was right for the time... the confusion among the Nkrumaist front is a clear lack of definition of their ideology'...".
In that same 16 December piece, Prof. Amoako Baah reportedly said that Nkrumah would have found it very difficult to implement some of his ideas in modern times considering the growth in the country’s population from 4.5 million as at independence to 25 million in 2010. Why political scientist Prof Amoako Baah chose to cite 4 year old data probably should have served as a warning to all about his current attitude work, education, governance, and responsibility to the students under his care and control.
Then, last month, in a 27 March report sourced to myjoyonline.com titled, "Ghana’s education is almost useless", Prof. Amoako Baah counseled Ghanaians that:
"...Ghana’s independence appears meaningless because successive leaders preoccupy themselves with building monuments instead of passing on knowledge to the next generation...Due to that wrong mindset, much was not done to improve the country’s educational system rendering it “unpractical and almost useless...Ghana has not developed like its peers after independence because its first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah ran a one-man show as he failed to mentor people who could take over from him in his absence....( Amoako-Baah)... challenged Ghanaian leaders to think into the future and provide the necessary tools that the younger generation would need to build on and better whatever they have left..."
Continued Prof. Amoako Baah:
"... “You go to America and ask Americans who is the best president the country has ever had, no doubt Abraham Lincoln; what did he build? Nothing! The greatest assets that a leader can bequeath to a country is not monuments, it is thinking properly. Because if you teach the young to think properly, they can build far greater monuments that you can ever build.”..."
Prof Amoako Baah then proposed that: "...instead of competing with Ivory Coast...whose resources are almost the same as Ghana’s...(both)...can join forces as the world’s largest and second largest cocoa producers...to sell their produce to a cartel and put value on the produce...So far as such things are concerned, no western country would come and make any suggestion of that sort when it would not be to their advantage...But a well-educated society would be able to think through in that direction..."
So, dear reader, if Nkrumah was "a great man by all standards", how come Prof. Amoako Baah, practically within the same year, opines that Nkrumah's principles of human development, national construction, international relations, and his accomplishments are "almost useless" because Nkrumah failed to create minds that "...could take over from him in his absence..."?
The fundamental challenge for Prof. Amoako Baah is how he is able to reconcile the two opposite versions about Nkrumah in his head, and explain the questions we raise in this multi-part essay series, below.
We believe that much of the illogical and counter-historical Danquah-Busia-Dombo confederate-inspired critiques from by Prof. Amoako Baah on the Kwame Nkrumah record and legacy are just carbohydrates. They are fattening like Massa Trigo corm meal. But, they are without essential substance. Like Massa Trigo, it fills the Danquah-Busia-Dombo confederates' stomach. But it ain't got no protein, vitamins, or amino acid for the body, brain, or soul! So maybe Chief Psychiatrist Dr Akwasi Osei of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) may have a point there.
.................In the language of our other Ghana-centered colleague, Francis Nkrumah, "We Shall Return!".
NOTE: This is Part I of the 3-part essay.
©Prof Lungu is Ghana-centered/Ghana-Proud. Prof Lungu is based in Washington DC, USA. Brought to you courtesy www.GhanaHero.com©24 Apr. 15.
SOURCES:
1. HORST W. J. RITTEL and MELVIN M. WEBBER: Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning, Policy Sciences 4 (1973), 155-169
http://www.uctc.net/mwebber/Rittel+Webber+Dilemmas+General_Theory_of_Planning.pdf
2. Harold Dwight Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936).
3. Paul J. Magnarella: Assessing the Concept of Human Rights in Africa: A review of Human Rights in Africa: The Conflict of Implementation by Richard Amoako Baah, https://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/volumes/2001/1-2/baah-magnarella.pdf.
4. Nonso Okereafoezeke, Africa Today, Volume 50, Number 1, Spring 2003 , 121-123, Baah, Richard Amoako. 2000. Review of Human Rights In Africa: The Conflict Of Implementation, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/africa_today/summary/v050/50.1okereafoezeke.html
5. David Amoah Boateng, Ghana the failed state, Ghanaweb, 24 April 2015, http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=355590
6. First Transcontinental Railroad, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad.
7. American Political Science Association. A Guide to Professional Ethics in Political Science, Second Edition, Revised 2012.
8. www.GhanaHero.com/Visions
Copyright © 1994 - 2024 GhanaWeb. All rights reserved.
