Onsy Nkrumah Has Asked Me The Same Question

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Garden City, New York

March 28, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

This past Christmas, the man by the name of Onsy Nathaniel Kwame Nkrumah wrote to ask me about how I had gotten to know Rev. Francis Akwasi Amoako. The alleged son of Ghana's first postcolonial premier had written to me because he said that he had read one of my articles in which I had mentioned the name of Rev. Amoako. But even more significantly, Dr. Onsy Nkrumah stated in his emails that he wanted to have the alleged brutal murderers of Rev. Amoako brought to justice.

The enquiry seemed rather quaint to me because Dr. Nkrumah also stated that he was looking forward to a two-way exchange between us. You see, I also happen to be a great-grandnephew of Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah, the sometime political mentor of the future President Kwame Nkrumah who would shortly become Nkrumah's arch-nemesis and die suspiciously under the notorious Convention People's Party-fangled Preventive Detention Act (PDA). And so, naturally, I muttered to myself that about the only circumstances under which I would consent to holding forth with the alleged son of the legendary African Show Boy by his Egyptian mistress, would be if the younger Dr. Nkrumah had anything constructive to say about what he thought about the brutal assassination of the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics.

At any rate, I decided that the best way to deal with Dr. Onsy Nkrumah was to not respond to either of his two emails. I also did not want to be conned into the purely familial controversy raging between Onsy and his apparently grudge-wracked half-brother Mr. Sekou Nkrumah. I am writing this piece because I just finished reading the Daily Guide's news article captioned "Nkrumah's Son Fights Rawlings" (Ghanaweb.com 3/28/15). Onsy Nkrumah raises several interesting questions about the circumstances surrounding the apparently brutal murder of Rev. Amoako. In 1990, when I learned of his likely or possible assassination, I had been resident here in the United States for five years. But what is even more significant to note is that in those days, the Internet had not assumed its present global ubiquity, thus news from Ghana was not as readily accessible as it is today.

I would learn of Rev. Amoako's death from my immediate senior sister after she availed me a copy of the gospel musical recordings of The Tagoe Sisters and I enquired about their identity. The younger Dr. Nkrumah raises some forensically loaded questions needing prompt investigation, the considerable temporal span of this blood-curdling act notwithstanding. If, for instance, it is true that it had been two low-ranked officers of the Ghana Armed Forces that deliberately ran their PINZGUA military vehicle over the vehicle in which Rev. Amoako had been traveling from Takoradi to Accra at the Winneba-Junction, then, of course, the Ghanaian public and the family and relatives of the deceased cleric have every right to know the identities of the alleged suspects.

Then, also, the question of whether the alleged murder suspects, or assassins, had received their marching orders from above needs investigating, for it makes perfect sense to suspect the low-ranked military oderlies allegedly involved in the murder of Rev. Amoako to have received their instructions from their professional superiors. Whether Mr. Rawlings was personally involved in Rev. Amoako's brutal assassination, on the other hand, is quite a different matter altogether. At best, the former Chairman Jerry John Rawlings may be reasonably faulted for having created the sort of rank atmosphere of abject criminality that motivated the alleged two low-ranked soldiers to brutally stab Rev. Amoako to death.

On the latter count, those seeking to bring the alleged killers of Rev. Amoako to justice may have to rely on the coroner or medical examiner's report, if an autopsy had, indeed, been conducted on the mortal remains of the allegedly slain renowned and well-respected clergyman.

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