Sekou Nkrumah Could Simply Not Work For Akufo-Addo

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

His decision to return into the fold of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was just a matter of course and a matter of time. The fact of the matter is that Sekou Nkrumah never quite fit in with the democratic-welfarist ideals of the Danquah-Dombo-Busia-inspired New Patriotic Party (NPP). And so it absolutely comes as no news, at all, for the younger Mr. Nkrumah to publicly declare his intention of returning to the Rawlings-minted, terror-mongering and public latrine-seizing juggernaut (See "I Did Not Work for Nana Akufo-Addo - Sekou" Peacefmonline.com/Ghanaweb.com 4/9/13).

As a youth organizer for the largely lethargic Mills-Mahama government of the National Democratic Congress, Sekou Nkrumah was not credited with any radical reconfiguration of the National Youth Council (NYC), short of incessantly and annoyingly expressing his utter frustration by heckling the NDC leadership, and in particular by impugning the leadership skills of his primary benefactor.

And so it is not clear why he feels the necessity of publicly announcing what has always been known about him - which is that the younger Mr. Nkrumah's decision to endorse the presidential candidacy of Nana Akufo-Addo had absolutely no impact beyond the momentary irritation that it created among the ranks of the leadership of the National Democratic Congress.

What is also clear, not that it wasn't in any way before, is the fact that Mr. Sekou Toure's namesake is vapidly unprincipled almost to the extent of knavishness. For starters, he claims that fundamentally nothing on the ground has changed vis-a-vis the operational agenda and effectiveness of the Mahama-led NDC, and yet Sekou Nkrumah also claims that his "social democratic ideals" have compelled him to rejoin the party.

Maybe what he needs to do now is to clearly articulate precisely why he is convinced that trucking with a party which is top-heavy with visionless and profligate leadership is going to serve any meaningful and/or constructive purpose in the offing. Then also, the man rather naively seems to believe that he could remarkably impact the grassroots membership of the NDC without having to deal either directly or obliquely with the leadership which hermetically controls the finances of the party and therefore is able to shape and direct the temperament and aspirations of the masses in ways that Sekou Nkrumah has yet to demonstrate any appreciable understanding of; unless, of course, he has effectively resigned himself to living in a fool's paradise.

Needless to say, the follwing statement which is attributed to him, clearly points to the fact that the younger Mr. Nkrumah may not be very conscious of what he is talking about. Take this reading, for example: "Leadership comes and goes[,] but the political party have [sic] its mass support and has its core value[;] and if you belong to the party, you have to promote the ideas of the party."

It is, of course, true that leadership lacks permanence; still, the inescapable fact equally remains that the succeeding generation of leaders are often heavily influenced by the performance and political culture of their predecessors. And already, we see this strikingly reflected in the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress, just as we saw the same reflected in the Mills-led NDC and, before the latter, the pseudo-revolutionary regime of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings.

Sekou Nkrumah also claims that Nana Akufo-Addo's "theoretical defeat" in the 2012 presidential polls has fully convinced him to return to his ideological roots, having woefully failed in facilitating the much-anticipated defeat of the now-President John Dramani Mahama, which event the younger Mr. Nkrumah firmly believes would have forced the NDC leadership to realign itself with the purported social democratic "core values" of Mr. Rawlings' political handicraft. Funny man Sekou, were you to ask me, dear reader.

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

Department of English

Nassau Community College of SUNY

Garden City, New York

April 10, 2013

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