Re: J.J. was violent, wicked and bloodthirsty

Imbibing stuff and regurgitating same appears to be the stock-in-trade of the typical Ghanaian elite whose main function in life is pretty much unknown. And so is it possible that in pattern of his uselessness, no Ghanaian scholar has considered the veracity of the simile, “He has buried his head like an ostrich.”

It is also a cliché that fits well in the Ghanaian context because if the ostrich indeed buries its head to hide from danger, then it must be as pretty dumb as the Ghanaian elite. Being able to run at forty miles per hour with a bodyweight reaching up to 350 pounds with a powerful capacity to inflict mortal wound on its predator with its powerful talons, the last thing the ostrich will try to do will be to bury its head as a dumb strategy to prevent danger.

Be it as it may, the idea is an attractive one to the naïve and blissfully ignorant Ghanaians more likely to bury their heads in the sand: “Burying our heads like ostriches!” And so that is how it applies to the ignorant Ghanaians…..including of course, Sekou Nkrumah, the biological son of Kwame Nkrumah. I am no fan of Jerry John Rawlings, and I don’t remember the last time I said anything positive about that man. And I have never been a fan of Nkrumah. In fact, most of my writings have been very critical of that man, and I intend to produce more works critical of him. And my hero is Kotoka who valiantly overthrew the dictator called Nkrumah.

But if confronted with these two evil geniuses, I will always choose Jerry John Rawling far above Nkrumah, and I will not do that under any compunction. Please, don’t get me wrong. Rawlings was a violent man who killed a lot of people. So he was bloodthirsty and violent. And when you study his panoply of lies, betrayal of cronies, passion of jealousy and his love of lies, you will have to select him as the most wicked person that ever lived in Ghana.

But there is nothing you can write about Jerry John Rawling which you cannot write about Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah destroyed many lives and imposed a psyche of violence upon a nation which he claimed he freed. Those his cruelty led to death were innumerable. And he was a very wicked person to both his friends and foes. Ako Adjei, who housed Nkrumah in UK and actually proposed him to the UGCC was falsely accused and sentenced to death upon a sham trial. He was languishing in prison when Nkrumah was overthrown…..There was also the story of JB Danquah, a lawyer and scholar whose life was wasted in Nkrumah’s prison.

And so as far as these two Ghanaian leaders are concerned, they were exceptionally evil. That is why the recent statement by Sekou Nkrumah which characterized JJ Rawlings as violent, wicked and blood-thirsty contains half-truths.

To be fair to Sekou, a man is not to be convicted on the deeds of his father (There is no bill of attainder in Ghanaian jurisprudence). And Sekou himself has had cause to state unfavorable matters against his own father, once describing him as a veritable dictator. But that statement, in and of itself, is very feeble, and does not adequately describe the multitudinous violence, wickedness and blood thirstiness of Nkrumah. If these foregoing expletives are applied to JJ Rawlings, then Sekou must equally take care to balance the equation of these Siamese twins in evil with which the nation was cursed. Otherwise he is no better than the proverbial ostrich, running away from reality by burying his head in the sand!.



He must note also that he must exceed the armada of Ghanaian pseudo-intellectuals whose stock in trade is just to spew a panoply of insults against whoever dares to raise protestation against these two evil twins that led the nation into an abyss. But with Nkrumah, he was supposed to be an enlightened leader: He claimed to have studied abroad and acquired some knowledge in philosophy, theology and politics. We don’t know whether it is true or not, but we will weigh him on his claim.

There are those who claim that he was pumping toilet during his stay abroad. And these declarants also claimed that he was homeless. Because Nkrumah mostly spoke in pidgin English accent and had read almost all his speeches and never granted many interviews in which he spoke extemporaneously, we can say that he had limited intellectual and verbal faculties of which one professor commented when Nkrumah sought recommendation to study a Ph.D.

And so those who make claims of Nkrumah’s illiteracy must be objectively heard, since the man did not bring any certificate to Ghana. His latter-day actions of incarcerating people without trial, making himself life president and making the country one-party state….They all bespeak of an arrant ignoramus who had no idea of the meaning of freedom, independence, political leadership or economic policy. That depth of ignorance can only emanate from a person that did not learn in either US or UK, or a person who even listened to the news to acquire any smidgen of leadership quality. And so even if Nkrumah was not pumping toilet abroad, he must have inhaled enough of the devil’s fart to become a wizard of violence, of wickedness and of bloodthirstiness.

But all facetiousness aside, there was also the irony of what Sekou wrote. All that you have to do is to replace Rawlings with Nkrumah in the following text, and then you will be amazed how the dictator’s dossier also fits the context of Sekou’s claims against Rawlings. Sekou naively wrote:

“Let’s throw away the Ghanaian legendary hypocrisy and talk plain. The man was a very wicked man, and he was not a nice guy! Handsome yes, in his younger days. Charismatic? Sure, he was, and he could run his mouth like all the other empty barrels, including Trump!”

He indicated that Rawlings was just a populist who climbed on the back of the ordinary Ghanaian to fame.

“JJ was also a violent, bloodthirsty man,” he said.

“His hunger for power never diminished, he strongly believed that Ghana was justifiably his for the taking! He was smart enough to understand the Ghanaian way of thinking. We fear and respect authority, so the daredevil he was, he forcefully captured state power. And then terrorized the Ghanaian populace and pushed them into submission! Remember the culture of silence?”

“Yes, Rawlings never believed in democracy, it was rather the 'democratization of violence' he felt comfortable with, that was his element, his home!” Sekou Nkrumah’s post concluded.

Now I would not bother to substitute the name of Rawlings with that of Nkrumah. It is a work better left to the artistic imagination of our readers. And even if they do the substitution of names with basic skill, they will realize that Sekou was also talking about his father in imagistic verisimilitude. Whatever Sekou said about Rawlings is true; but as I always point out, his reign, no matter how badly it began, led somehow accidentally to our present democracy, whether he was the architect of it or not. We are no longer in any dictatorship. Period! He also left a vibrant and virile party as his legacy.



Nkrumah’s CPP exists on paper alone, and even where Nkrumah’s daughter Samia stood against a political neophyte for parliament, she was soundly defeated. This because Nkrumah is hated and remembered for his violence, wickedness and bloodthirstiness. Rawlings’ daughter Zanetor has a seat in Ghana’s parliament!

Nobody wants Nkrumah’s party or progeny in political positions in Ghana. Nkrumah came to meet democracy of the colonialists and overthrew it, turning the political system into an arrant dictatorship which he misconstrued as independence. And for his tyranny, he was violently overthrown. He died miserably in exile all alone by himself, never ever seeing his family again.

Rawlings died at home, surrounded by his own beloved family and given a state burial. There is a reason for this variant poetic justice meted out to these two similarly evil men. The reason being that Rawlings handed over power to a democratic government! And it may well be that it was compulsorily done. Did Nkrumah allow a multi-party government? He destroyed Ghana’s democracy and made himself life President and the country one-party state, dismissing judges that acquitted his best friend Arko Adjei and the rest of his cronies who he falsely accused of having plotted his assassination.

And for all these evil deeds, Dr. Sekou Nkrumah has found nothing wrong with the actions of his father. That type of conscientious ignorance may well be the attitude of the proverbial ostriches still singing Nkrumah’s praises. And that type of conscious ignorance will be typical of the ordinary Ghanaian whose skewed view is in pattern with the self-induced stupidity of the proverbial ostrich.

But no matter how much we slide and dice the issue here, there is still a critical mass of Ghanaians who behave as the intelligent ostrich in the wilderness. They know that the largest bird on earth sees far because of its height, and is not as stupid as we think. If you raise the mythical simile about ostriches, they will tell you that they know where the truth lies, and are familiar with it. Their heads are not buried in the ground! They know who Nkrumah is. And they also know who Rawlings is.