"... 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...One is curious about the last time Prof. Amoako Baah got out of his "Lazy Boy" academy chair to visit his own department's website. While we strongly believe that the Professor has the freedom and the right to say whatever he wants, we also know that as a public employee and the head of a major university department in Ghana, Prof Amoako Baah has moral, ethical, professional, and legal responsibility to be reflective, balanced, and responsible in his public utterances. KNUST is not an NPP or PP university. We believe that students working under Prof. Amoako Baah are not being fairly or properly served in the spheres of critical thinking, independence of thought, and balanced /reflective analyses. The students, faculty, and employees at KNUST deserve better. Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana deserves a lot better at KNUST!" ( (Prof Lungu, Cinqo de Mayo, 2015*).
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.
The reader will agree with us that "national development and education", particularly in a new Nation suddenly free of colonial domination, will be a lot more complex and challenging than teaching "political studies", a quasi-discipline from the ivory tower academy.
Fact is, Prof. Amoako Baah who says that Nkrumah was not "consistent on his ideological stance" with respect to his principles and vision for Ghanaian national development cannot tell us there is only one definition of "political science", or, of "history" for that matter. This is the same for even the narrower concept of “Human Dignity” that Prof. Amoako Baah explores in Chapter 7 of his book, "Human Rights in Africa -The Conflict of Implementation".
In a review of that 2002 book, Prof. Paul Magnarella, University of Florida, Gainesville, agrees that "philosophers and human rights scholars do not agree on the nature of human dignity...(that)...the claimed universality of human rights is problematic..."
To cut to the chase, national construction and development vision post-colonial dictatorship, must necessarily address more complexities, "wicked problems", as described by Rittel and Webber in 1973. And whilst Prof. Amoako Baah may want all of us to know that he is a social scientist, we want to remind him that, in case he has forgotten, there is also an art to the discipline of political science itself. And to that, we must also add power relations - internal and external.
Wicked, indeed!
In that light, to argue that "Ghana would be better off if Nkrumah hadn't made enemies" is one of the craziest claims we have ever read from a university professor. Fact is, nations, as people, do not choose their enemies, nor do they specify the permanent interests of even their "best friends". Why, after all, did the British Empire treat the US differently from Ghana when they each got their independence from Britain? What kind of relations applied in each case? So, while we do not agree with the method and the "failed state" label for Ghana, we find that David Amoah Boateng understands those power and control factors (even within Ghana) when he commands Ghanaian youth in a Ghanaweb feature article thus:
"...the leaders of this nation...have taken us for granted for a long time. They steal from us and use the stolen money to school their children abroad Dubai, U.S.A and Europe because they themselves don’t trust the education system of the country they manage..." (Ghanaweb, 24 April 2015).
Dear reader, you must surely concur that Prof. Richard Amoako Baah, in his position as the Chairman of that department, is himself, a manager of education in Nkrumah's Ghana, as surely as night follows day. Our professor, a manager of education as KNUST, does not even trust what he manages.
Why, we want to know, must Prof Amoako Baah blame Kwame Nkrumah today for the failure of education when he himself concedes that "Nkrumah...(was)...a 'great man by all standards'...(who was behind)...the best of education..."his "lazy thinkers" received? And how does a scholar reconcile all of that in their head, then next, attempt to sell all of that to the people on radio and television?
We are saying that Prof. Amoako Baah ought to understand that the complexities in governance are significant for practitioners. He himself wrote about conflicts/complexities in "implementation." Therefore, a single conceptual definition of governance and development ideology is not practical, important, or even necessary. Even less so for practice. Again, Prof. Amoako Baah ought to be the first to acknowledge that fact considering he has already argued that there are significant local/Akan variations that add complexities to the western concept of "Human Dignity", a theoretical construct practiced in arm-chairs.
To govern, Nkrumah had to apply theory to practice, and practice to theory!
He did!
And Dr, Kwame Nkrumah succeeded, until the overthrow by traitors by: "...bona fide members of the Ghanaian military....(and)...rascal... civilians...(among them)...former prime minister...Busia" , a hopeless gang remotely funded and controlled by western powers external to Ghana/Africa.
What we will say here is this. As governance goes in Ghana, what is important is the development of a Ghana-centered vision and a coherent road map and plans. Then, the best qualified professionals and technicians are assembled to help build and construct the national project consistent with sound national human - development goals. You do not get to "home" using a spoils system of your political party by doling out jobs and government contracts to "foot soldiers", family members, members of your ethnic group, friends, or those with deep pockets some of it may have been stolen from the people in the first place.
For Ghana, the essential requirement for Nkrumah was a Unitary Vision for the former British colony from the get go! So, using the promise of regional planning under the rubric of National Development policy, Nkrumah accomplished a lot for Ghana within that small window of Ghanaian national life (1957-1966). After all, students and children (including those at KNUST and GIMPA, in Accra-Tema), and professors like Amoako Baah himself, must all walk or drive on public roads to school and work, They must work in public buildings that protect them against the elements, rodents, vermin, and diseases, They must use publicly-supported electricity at work and at home - to do homework and research, find their way in the dark, entertain themselves, power industry, and so forth. (Need we cite the facilities by name on these pages?)
Clearly, Nkrumah and the CPP did not achieve any of those things through laziness. Certainly not through lazy "thinking" or "doing". Rather, it is our latter day Prof. Amoako Baah who appears now to be lazy in thought, and absent-minded about major matters even as he chooses to bask in the minors.
While noting the contribution of Amoako Baah's book to the field, another reviewer of "Human Rights in Africa -The Conflict of Implementation", Nonso Okereafoezeke, note that the "book is an example of a legitimate argument somewhat carelessly presented..." Okereafoezeke observes that "...(T)he book seems to have been hurriedly put together...: the page numbers in the table of contents differ from those on the pages; some of the chapter titles are absent from the table of contents, while other chapter titles differ from what are listed there. Prof. Magnarella as well found similar confusion and laziness in the book, observing that "...the pagination of the table of contents and body of the book do not match..."
On another front, one is curious about the last time the head of the Department of History and Political Studies at KNUST got out of his "Lazy Boy" academy chair to visit his own department's website to see (1) how the site is organized, (2) what research and studies by faculty and student are posted, and (3) what is the quality of information available to those who may be interested in the programs of that department. Does he know what the average prospective student, a member of the media, a researcher, a potential sponsors/donor, etc., come away with, after visiting his department's website?
2007-2008 AD. Remarkably, as of this writing, Prof. Amoako Baah's "Research & Collaborations" webpages all have 2007-2008 era information, going back to the Ghana@50 "celebration" that was orchestrated by the NPP government. For instance, "Conferences" page has this:
"...The 2007/2008 academic year was very eventful for the Department. It continued to play an active role in the organization and delivery of the Roundtable Conferences...(on)...the Golden Jubilee Anniversary of Ghana's Independence....Dr. W.J. Donkoh, Head of the Department...presented a paper on the Progress Party (PP)...17th-18th December 2007..."
And we thought Prof Richard Amoako Baah is Chaiman, Department of History and Political Studies, KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana, today!
Under the tab "News and Announcement", we found no information for "Announcements and Notices". "No events available for your search" is what you get for "Upcoming Events" and "Upcoming General". On the other hand, "Latest News" has information about a 2014 student group visit to Kakum National Forest. (In fact, we found even more alarming deficiencies with the department's "Academic" webpage, too numerous for us to care enumerating on these pages).
On a more serious note that goes to character as well attitude to work, in the review of Prof. Amoako Baah's book, Prof. Magnarella notes that:
"...Unfortunately,... (Amoako Baah)...fails to explain when or exactly how the data were gathered. The reader does not learn, for example, whether the author himself administered the questionnaires and conducted the interviews or whether he enlisted the help of others..."
We believe this is an unfortunate breach of scientific inquiry. In fact, this major point has important implications for the entire foundation of Prof Amoako Baah's thesis in "Human Rights in Africa -The Conflict of Implementation", if we must be sufficiently critical. As far as we know, this item is unsettled.
We understand that Dr. Amoako Baah obtained his doctorate from the University of Tennessee, USA. Much of Tennessee is in the service area of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a water distribution and "electricity-dam" constructed by the US government as a development-cum-electricity-cum-industry-cum-anti-poverty program for Tennessee and surrounding States. We imagine Professor Amoako Baah used TVA electricity while he was a student in Tennessee. But now, Prof. Amoako Baah has a problem with infrastructure - electricity, buildings, dams, roads, etc., constructed by the CPP under the leadership of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
Further, Prof. Amoako Baah's statement that Lincoln, "...the best president the...USA...has ever had..." never built anything is startling for one who earned his Ph.D. in the US and is now in fact the head of a History Department in a university in Ghana. The statement is at once illogical. It is not based on any level-headed fact, certainly not on history.
The idea is, it is "leaders" of nations, not the "young", who provide funds by whatever means and order to be built facilities and monuments, precisely the type we call public goods, (e.g., TVA, Akosombo, Tema Harbor, etc.). We are not talking about Mobutu-size mansions for the greedy, or Boigny-cathedral-mosques, for those who fawn at foreign religions.
No!.
Public goods, in the secular sense, serve all the people but do not lend to equal individual responsibility for development, payment, upkeep, or renewal. In fact, even within this construct, there are always power relations (who will get what, how much, when, how (Lasswell, 1936). Bizarrely, in the Prof. Amoako Baah scheme of education and development, we can teach-and-talk, and talks-and-teach, and teach-and-talk some more. But, we will never get to build anything worth the public pesewa. After all, logically, in a strange twist to "Murphy's Law", our professor would have us learn that today's "young" who will be the "leaders" of tomorrow will also teach-and-talk, talk-and-teach, and teach-and-talk some more, and not have to build "Nothing"!
Further, to say that President Abraham Lincoln, US Civil War commander, who was president 5 short years (1860-1865) and was assassinated by a confederate secessionist merely 6 days after the surrender of the southern States in 1865, to say that Lincoln "built nothing" is a sign of laziness of thought, lack of historical perspective, and myopic vision.
By our count, there were 13 American presidents before Lincoln, thus Lincoln had a path already trodden, even with the attempted confederate secession. But, Lincoln re-built and repaired the Union spirit when he saved the Union. Further, because of the (1) plural character of the people, (2) institution of slavery and (3) suspicion of governmental power, etc., the Founding Fathers crafted a Constitution that severely limited the role of the "Federal Government". In that sense, and with the benefit of hindsight, the US Founding Father themselves were myopic. Even so, Lincoln taxed. Lincoln taxed to build!
The rundown has it that Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin at Sinking Springs Farm, Kentucky, in 1809. He was shot in Washington DC 14th April, 1865, and died a day later. Is Prof. Amoako Baah ready to tell us Lincoln lived in log cabins as his education and career took off and evolved in space - from Kentucky to Illinois, to Washington, DC?
Not so fast, professor!
In fact, in 1837, when Lincoln first took up residence in Springfield, IL, he reportedly moved into a "row of newly built brick buildings at Hoffman Row." Significantly, as a member of the Illinois legislature, Lincoln was a primary force, that same year, behind the relocation of the Illinois state capital from Vandalia to Springfield, the current state capital where President Obama declared his candidacy for President in 2008. Then in 1856, "the Lincolns" had their residence re-built, from One-and-Half Story to 2-Stories, in Springfield. On the state capital thing, just ask the Nigerians what they did in Abuja and Suleja when they moved their national capital from Lagos in 1976. You build buildings, roads, bridges, and lifes when you relocate capitals. That is what you do!
In 1861, after being elected President, Lincoln approved a 3% federal income tax (the first in the US) on incomes more than $800.00. The next year, Lincoln signed the "land grants" law known as the "Homestead Act" precisely for the purpose of building-up the United States, going West. Notably, President Lincoln approved the first major segment (1,087 mile (1,749 km)) of the Union Pacific rail track for the US Transcontinental Railroad, from Council Bluffs, Iowa (on the eastern side), to the Missouri River). In fact, the record shows that Lincoln himself selected the Missouri River as the "..."Transfer Depot" where up to seven railroads could transfer mail and other goods to Union Pacific trains bound for the west..."
From here, all fair minds will conclude that the idea that Lincoln built "Nothing" is a farce. In fact, the same fair minds will surmise that Lincoln would most likely have built a lot more for the US after the devastating Civil War. But, Lincoln was overthrown by murder through an assassin's bullet, at the hand of a confederate sympathizer in, 1865.
Lincoln built, and Lincoln saved the US "Union".
But Kwame Nkrumah, as a Pacesetter, was Ghana's "George Washington", right from the start when there were no roads trodden in all of Africa. Nkrumah led others and founded the Ghana Nation we know today, the same that has stood the test of time since 1957.
Let no one fool anyone!
In the 27 March article referenced in Part I about Dr. Nkrumah's "One-Man-Show" and "almost useless" education, our professor 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...".
Here, the historical panache and critical lens of Prof. Amoako Baah are shamefully exposed: Chairman Prof. Amoako Baah has no clothes.
The professor is exposed because according to Ghanaweb commentator "United Ghana", in fact "...Nkrumah built huge silos so Gh & I. Coast could control price of cocoa but the Ivorian govt eventually backed out on the orders of their French overlords..."
In fact, African history shows us the Ivory Coast, like most "Francophone" African colonies, but unlike the Zaragoza Mestizos and Zapotec of Mexico who defeated Napoleon IIIs' army and set Mexico free beginning 5 May, 1862, these so-called "Francophone" did not even begin to sever the umbilical cord to their colonializing power, France. As a result, the independence of the Francophone Africa since Gen. Charles de Gaulle has permanently been a farce - "neo-colonial", as understood perfectly by Nkrumah, way back then.
Indeed, France spearheaded the overthrow of Nkrumah because of their (France's) own "permanent interests" in a colony that was next-door to Nkrumah's Ghana: France did not want a union of African nations that potentially could threaten French (and western interests).
So now, Ivory Coast, after suffering from civil wars in 2002-2004, then 2011-2012, and xenophobic strife, and with fewer of its hinterlands developing on account of their own choices, now sees a benefit. It has resisted overtures by Nkrumah's Ghana is playing hard ball before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea over a parcel of sea at Cape Three Points that has always been within the orbit of Ghana, even as the world has been turning since 1957.
Did Ghanaians make an enemy of the Ivory Coast, Prof. Amoako Baah, even as Ghana hosted scores and score of its citizens made destitute by civil wars they themselves created when their French "patron" did not care enough set them fully free, no strings attached after the hauls of bondage, produce, and blood?
Strangely, in 2015, our professor is proposing Ghana form a cocoa cartel with the Ivory Coast.
How absurd!
Today, Prof. Amoako Baah should look at the Ivory Coast as a neighbor best separated by a Euclidean fence beginning at Cape Three Points, as a neighbor whose puppet masters still remotely control their African lands, as a neighbor with mostly unshared, incompatible, interests.
Fact is, Ghana has always been richer and safer compared to so many other African countries that were poorer without the Nkrumah vision, without the CPP development agenda, without the African-centered universal ideologies at bottom of all the physical and human development that were crowned by "the best of education" Africans could get in Africa during 1957-1966.
So go figure that one out for us, Prof. Amoako Baah!
Finally, we can state that Prof. Amoako Baah fails even basic lessons in Ghanaian history and more. Seems to us our professor may have forgotten all the lessons he took: Lessons in geography; economics; business; law;' political-economy; regional planning; etc. Those would have been on topics such as demographics, amalgamation, personal income, economies of scale, employment, market size, education, and Rural-Push/Urban-Pull. That is , assuming our professor bothered to take one or more of those courses in the first place. You see, according to our professor, "...Nkrumah would have found it very difficult to implement some of his ideas in modern times looking at the growth in the country’s population from 4.5 million as at independence to 25 million in 2010..."
Here, Prof. Amoako Baah fails our elementary data accuracy test, in addition to rigor of analysis and inference.
The historical data shows that the population of Ghana at independence in 1957 was not 4.5 million, but rather 6 million, an under-estimate of 25% by Prof. Amoako Baah. On the other hand, while his data for the population of Ghana in 2010 is bother-line accurate, we nonetheless wonder why Prof. Amoako Baah presented 2010 data while he was standing level-footed on the ground at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, in Kumasi, in 2014.Shouldn't a professor of his caliber, one with many graduate assistants working under him, shouldn't the professor know Ghana's population, if he must attack the dead and others still living in a public forum?
But, all that said, we must inform the reader this: That is just half of the problem with respect to Dr. Amoako Baah's population theory!
History tells us most of the support for Nkrumah were in the urban centers, with massive support from workers, retired soldiers, and market women in those areas. The urban areas supported Nkrumah sooner, and more massively. Further, the same history, urban theory, regional geography, etc., inform us there are factors known as rural-push/urban-pull. In short, cities have been getting bigger in size, and bigger in population. The population of Ghana increased from 6 million in 1957 to 26 million in 2014 when Prof. Amoako Baah spoke. During that period, the urban areas (places with 5,000 or more people) increased their percentage of the population from about 23% in 1957 to about 55% in 2014. Consequently, how is it that we cannot expect Nkrumah to have done even better, or found the road a little bit easier, in 2014, when the "urban" areas were represented by over 50% of the people? (Or, is our professor signaling about the size of modern bombs in the hands of confederate secessionists?)
Nice try, professor!
So, as opposed to the theoretical, the fundamental "practice" question for Prof. Amoako Baah is this: When did "very difficult" become synonymous with inaction, failure, cynicism, 20/20 hindsightism?
In closing, while we strongly believe that Prof Amoako Baah has the freedom and the right to say whatever he wants consistent with law, we also know that as a public employee and the head of a major university department in Ghana, Prof Amoako Baah has moral, ethical, professional, and legal responsibility to be reflective and balanced in his public utterances. KNUST is not an NPP or PP university. The professor ought not to make one-sided critiques against other political "traditions" on the peoples' cedi. His public utterances and teachings, as detailed in this multi-part essay, are bald-faced one-sided, illogical, devoid of facts, and in some cases, mere conjecture. In fact, as the Head of the Department of History and Political Studies at KNUST, Prof Amoako Baah is gradually becoming a public agent and apologist for the Danquah-Busia-Dombo-NPP confederates some of whom do not even believe in a Unitary Ghana. From our vantage point, this is not an appropriate mode of public liaison for a professor who is funded by all the people, especially when he does not take time to to tell the people those are his own opinions, and not that of KNUST.
Again, Prof. Amoako Baah's arguments reviewed in this essay are off balance and illogical. Further, they fail the test of history on many fronts. They violate ethical standards of professional social science organizations. More important, in totality, those arguments make little theoretical or scholarly sense. To boot, leadership is not a theoretical object for arm chair prognosticians! Now in 2015, the mess on the webpages of the KNUST History and Political Studies Department, proves that, simple as it to do, even with the "lazy thinkers" nor under Professor Amoako Baah, in that department.
For an African who in the past wrote about complexities and the relevance of context in social analyses, practically little of Prof. Amoako Baah's 2014-2015 statements can be said to be founded on reflection and critical thinking. Our professor no longer recognizes the same complexities in social, economic, political, and cultural arenas, precisely the place where practice must occur.
In fact, it is bewildering that in totality, political scientist Prof Amoako Baah does not appear to even recognize or respect the significance and influence of "power" and "control" in national affairs, as well and in the affairs between Nation-States, beyond the individual who may have charisma. What, after all, is the usefulness of "not creating enemies", when your own nationals and colleagues are in cahoots with foreign agents to secede and/or subvert your Parliament-sanctioned national development and security agenda? How many bombs did the Confederate South lobe on Lincoln before that tragic event in that Washington theatre?
We think that by his serial pro-NPP-centered utterances, Prof. Amoako Baah has crossed the ethical threshold. If we may remind Prof. Baah, even if he is not a member of the American Political Science Association (APSA), their recommendation that "...Departments should adhere strictly to the rule that those faculty members who wish to endorse or sponsor a political position or activity do so in their own names...Departments as such should not endorse political positions...", is a reasonable one for any one in his position earning a paycheck through public taxes and other public means.
Again, when was the last time Prof. Amoako Baah told the media he was speaking just for himself?
MORE SIGNIFICANT, WE BELIEVE THAT STUDENTS WORKING UNDER PROF. AMOAKO BAAH ARE NOT BEING FAIRLY OR PROPERLY SERVED IN THE SPHERES OF CRITICAL THINKING, INDEPENDENCE OF THOUGHT, AND BALANCED /REFLECTIVE ANALYSES.
There is nothing challenging of students, there!
IN FACT, IT IS A MIGHTY SHORT ROAD FROM THESE ONE-SIDED UTTERANCES TO BULLYING OF NOT ONLY THE STUDENTS, BUT IN ADDITION, OF PROF. AMOAKO BAAH'S FELLOW FACULTY MEMBERS, TEACHING ASSISTANTS, AND EMPLOYEES OF KNUST AT LARGE. IN FACT, THESE CARELESS PRONOUNCEMENT MAY NOT POSITIVELY MOTIVATE PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS, POTENTIAL FACULTY MEMBERS, OR DONORS. THEY DO NOT INSPIRE CONFIDENCE IN THE ENTIRE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL STUDIES AT KNUST.
Regretfully, we must submit that all these Prof. Amoako Baah "teachings" are "useless". More important for this age, there is little that is corroborative, or affirming, or theoretically-grounded!
We suggest the professor pay some attention to real scholarship and how his entire department communicates with the public and the media, to practice beyond talking in the classroom. He could start by being more reflective and by re-vamping the department's online presence to make those webpages more effective, informative, and full of "useful" details about publications, research proposals, awards, and real and effective "collaborative" initiatives . We are saying Prof. Amoako Baah ought to re-assess his public profile as a respected member of the Ghanaian university community, the academy at large, and whatever professional organizations he may now be a member. Fact is, we'd really hate to think that Chief Psychiatrist Dr Akwasi Osei of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has a point there - with a university professor in a public university!
Yes - the students, faculty, and employees at KNUST deserve better!
Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana deserves a lot better!!
SOURCES (Updated from Part I):
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. Abraham Lincoln Chronology: The Papers of Abraham Lincoln,
http://www.papersofabrahamlincoln.org/resources/abraham-lincoln-chronology
6. David Amoah Boateng, Ghana the failed state, Ghanaweb, 24 April 2015, http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=355590
7. First Transcontinental Railroad, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad.
8. American Political Science Association. A Guide to Professional Ethics in Political Science, Second Edition, Revised 2012.
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ghana#Urban-rural_disparities
10. www.GhanaHero.com/Visions
11. www.GhanaHero.com/FOIB - Are You Pickable, Mr. Politician - The Pan-African "Freedom of Information Bill" song. Listen to it! Get a FREE copy!
12. Paul Lee, Special to SeeingBlack.com: Documents Expose U.S. Role in Nkrumah Overthrow, http://www.seeingblack.com/x060702/nkrumah.shtml
13. Research & Collaborations - Conferences,
http://histpol.knust.edu.gh/research-collaborations/conferences
©Prof Lungu is Ghana-centered/Ghana-Proud. Prof Lungu is based in Washington DC, USA. Brought to you courtesy www.GhanaHero.com©Cinqo de Mayo 2015.
*The entire Part 1-2-3 is dedicated to the honor of the Zaragoza Mestizos and Zapotec of Mexico who defeated the Army of Napoleon Bonaparte III of France, 5 May, 1862, in the Battle of Puebla. Mexico.
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