What Is Nkrumah Doing At Jubilee Park?

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

Garden City, New York

August 15, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I have had this article titled “Political Infamy: What Is Busia Doing At Nkrumah Park” for exactly seven years now. It was sent to me on August 12, 2008 at 8:30 am by somebody by the name of Komla Dunyo, for what reason or reasons, I have yet to figure out. Maybe Mr. Dunyo wanted to get a rise out of me or even a rejoinder from me; for in late 2005, I had published my slim volume of chaptered but untitled essays called Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana (iUniverse), which had gathered quite a bit of storm, largely from the CPP-Nkrumah camp whose membership envisaged my acknowledgment of the seminal significance of the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics as a dialectical diminishment, or even downright deprecation of Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, modern Ghana’s first postcolonial leader. I had meant to fire off a rapid response to Mr. Dunyo, but I never quite got around to doing so.

The article had to do with the renaming by the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government of the Sunyani-located Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park as Jubilee Park. For the sender of the aforesaid article, what was deeply troubling and even offensive, more than anything else, I suppose, was the decision by President Kufuor to also erect a life-size statue of Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia in the newly renamed park. For me, though, two things stood out clearly that made the Oxbridge-educated Dr. Busia more than deserving of having his statue erected in a prominent public space like the former Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park. First was the fact that Prime Minister Busia was of both Asante and Brong heritage and hailed from the Brong-Ahafo Region. The second fact was that Dr. Busia had distinguished himself both as a scholar and an educator, as well as a fierce frontline warrior against the divisive dictatorship of the Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party regime and had come very close to possibly losing his life, but for the ironic confidential assistance of Mr. Krobo Edusei, a CPP stalwart and Minister Without Portfolio, which enabled Dr. Busia to ship out of the country and into nearly seven years of exile.

Nkrumah’s human bulldogs, legend has it, had missed the ship carrying Dr. Busia out of Takoradi Harbor by just a couple of hours or less. But the first thing that struck me as rather odd, was the Ewe-sounding name of Mr. Komla Dunyo. For those of our readers who may not readily appreciate what I am driving at, President Nkrumah was never liked nor was he that popular in the Volta Region, especially among the Anlo-Ewe of the southeastern tip of the Volta Region. In the 1960 presidential election, it was only in the Volta Region that then-Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah lost to the pinch-hitting Dr. J. B. Danquah. And Nkrumah lost by a whopping 10-percent to Danquah’s 90-percent of the votes. One can only begin to appreciate the gravity of the Anlo-Ewe hatred for President Nkrumah, if one realizes the sort of brutal arm-twisting and widespread ballot-stuffing that went on and was hermetically orchestrated by CPP operatives (See Dennis Austin’s Politics In Ghana: 1946-1960).

And so the lingering question that took possession of my mind was as follows: Isn’t it strange when the sympathizer presumes to out-morn the bereaved? Mr. Dunyo wanted disaffected Nkrumaists like yours truly to accept his rather morbid reasoning that while, indeed, Prime Minister Busia “deserved some honor,” it was, nevertheless, tantamount to apostasy for anybody to locate Messrs. Nkrumah and Busia in the same pantheon or gallery of our national heroes. And the reason? Somehow, because Nkrumah liberated the Bono and Ahafo people from Asante imperialist domination, while Busia staunchly and treacherously championed the ungodly cause of the same. It is rather pathetic that Mr. Dunyo should name the Nkoranzahene as one of the “Asante Slaves” who rebelled against Manhyia by appealing to President Nkrumah to free them from under the Asante imperialist yoke.

Mr. Dunyo may do himself and his readers great epistemic good by finding out about the traditional relationship between the Paramount King of Nkoranza, my own ancestor, via the Queenmother of Akyem-Asiakwa, before presuming to draw such preposterous conclusions. Mr. Dunyo may equally do himself a lot of good by researching the historical relationship between the Paramount King of Wenchi and the Asantehene. At the end of the day, we are all Ghanaians, but not all of us are Akan in the traditional sense of the term. I also don’t know the sort of politician Mr. Dunyo is referring to when he so passionately and pontifically makes the following remark which, in fact, is his thesis: “When shall we have politicians who can distinguish clearly between partisan interest and public interest, between partisan sentiment and historical facts, and have the courage and strength of mind to pursue the latter for the collective welfare, even when it hurts their partisan interests.”

It is quite obvious from the preceding quote that the politician in reference is none other than former President John Agyekum-Kufuor. The preceding notwithstanding, my simple riposte to the dastardly attempt by a Pan-Africanist Kwame Nkrumah to divide and conquer Akans for the oxymoronic and megalomaniacal unification of the African continent is nothing to be exuberantly proud about.