After the 24th February 1966 coup d’état, Dr. K. A. Busia returned from Britain to Ghana. He was appointed Chairman of the National Advisory Committee of the National Liberation Council.
There was, no doubt, that the grounds had been prepared for him to assume the mantle of leadership after the military handed over power. Dr. Busia went on many trips on behalf of the NLC military government.
Upon the ‘demise’ of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and the CPP, the only prominent politician whose political orientation was consistent with that of the NLC military government was Dr. K. A. Busia.
While he was in self-imposed exile in Britain, he did more than anybody else to publicise Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s ‘atrocities’ by describing him as a Communist to the international media — mostly the BBC, VOA, etc.
Dr. Busia as Ghana’s Second Prime Minister
Dr. Busia won the 1969 general election with a landslide victory with a huge majority in Parliament, since Kwame Nkrumah as the sole founder of Ghana and the great CPP, was banned for ten (10) years by the NLC military junta, where Dr. Busia was the Chairman of the Political Committee and Advisor to the NLC.
Mr. J. A. Kufuor was a young Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs under Dr. Busia’s Progress Party government in 1969. After becoming Ghana’s Prime Minister, Dr. Busia discarded all his democratic credentials and became a crude dictator as he clashed with the Judiciary after dismissing five hundred and sixty-eight (568) Civil & Public Servants on suspicion of being members of Dr. Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party.
One Mr. E. K. Sallah sued the government in court and won the case. The Court ordered Dr. Busia to re-instate all the dismissed workers, and Busia refused and bragged thus: “No Court can enforce any decision that seeks to compel the government to employ or re-employ anybody. My government,” he continued, “will not condone any lowering of standards, making this principle.” Busia was the second Head of State to clash with the Judiciary — Dr. Nkrumah was the first President to sack a no-nonsense Chief Justice, called Sir Arku Korsah, for acquitting and discharging Mr. Tawiah Adamafio and five others during the Kulungugu bomb trial in December 1962.
Like father, like son. So, since Mr. J. A. Kufuor was a deputy minister during Dr. Busia’s time in office, he saw how Busia sacked 568 public and civil servants with impunity, and refused to re-instate them. We nicknamed those dismissals as “Apollo 568.”
When the opposition allegedly organised the removal of countless dead women from the country’s mortuaries and placed dumped them at vantage points in Accra, and accused Rawlings’ NDC of killing several women, Ghanaians believed him, and voted against the NDC in the election. Now immediately J. A. Kufuor was sworn in as President of Ghana on 7th January, 2001, the “killing” of women also stopped.
- A. Kufuor struck by dismissing all NDC appointees in the Civil and Public Service, as Dr. K. A. Busia, his former boss, did in 1969. As if that was not enough, he made an impossible attempt to destroy the entire NDC as a mass political party.
Kufuor created an illegal fast-track high court and used it to jail several NDC former ministers and appointees who worked under former President Rawlings, and often when the learned judges drew the attention of J. A. Kufuor to the fact that the fast-track high courts that he arbitrary created without any approval from Parliament were illegal, he snubbed them and went ahead with those illegal trials with impunity.
Her Excellency, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings could not enjoy her retirement form politics after 19 good years of service to mother Ghana as the First Lady.
- A. Kufuor was hell-bent on jailing Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings. If the NDC had lost the 2008 general election, Kufuor would have jailed Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings just to show Rawlings where power lies. I mean, why can’t former President J. A. Kufuor and former President Akufo-Addo tell their innocent supporters the truth about where Ghana came from and those who fought and died for our freedom instead of dancing around the plain truth and beating about the bush. I dare these two statesmen to tell the world if they are happy with their lies and deceit of the youth.
Agriculture
Dr. K. A. Busia’s answer to the acute food shortage was that Dr. Safo Adu, his Minister of Agriculture, should organise a match and “Hoot at Hunger.” Can you imagine that? So the march was organised, and speakers mounted Party pick-ups with several supporters of the Progress Party, they drove from Accra to Akropong, a distance of thirty-six miles, shouting “Hunger, go away! Hunger, go away!” but it did not go away — it stayed where it was.
In 1983, during the PNDC era, Chairman Rawlings took a cutlass and hoe in order to produce more food. You see, Dr. Busia was so intoxicated with power and too pre-occupied with getting his own back on his political opponents and those who dared criticize his government to be in a position to think soberly. Several people were arrested, and others fled the country, during President Akufo-Addo’s tenure of office. That is the colour of the violent and tribal NPP for you.
Dr. Afriyie Akoto was also the Minister of Agriculture under President Akufo-Addo. That minister loaded several trucks filled with plantain and cassava to the premises of the Ministry of Agriculture in Accra and asked the public to come and buy them.
Busia & the Military
During our campaign in 1969, the Busia Intelligence Boys (B.I.B), including this writer, made the people, especially the illiterate and semi-illiterate population, believe that academic credentials meant a man who “knew everything” — after all, he has taught even the Europeans at Oxford University. Dr. Busia, in his attempt to re-organise the Army and get rid of all senior officers so as to eliminate military threats to his government, appointed the late Lt. Colonel Acheampong to fill Brigadier and Twum Barima’s position as Commander of the First Infantry Brigade.
Dr. Busia falsely believed that his administration was safe under Acheampong, but it was latter’s troops that staged the coup and sacked Busia from office. When Busia heard about his overthrow while he was in Britain, he condemned the coup and said: “We employ soldiers to protect us and not to destroy us” — but he was the same man who congratulated Col. Kotoka and Major Afrifa for violently overthrowing Dr. Kwame Nkrumah on 24th February, 1966, when some chiefs even conferred Major Afrifa with the title “Okatakyie,” to wit: a warrior.
By 1971, there was only one Ewe senior military officer, called Col. Tieve, in the Ghana Armed Forces. Brigadier Kattah was recalled from India, where he was a military attaché, and put before a court, for alleged looting during the bloody coup d’état on 24th February, 1966. Progress Party intellectuals failed to inspire individual or group sacrifice for public welfare.
Dr. Busia was seen as an African scholar who had acquired so much learning that he could speak fluent English, therefore running the Ghanaian government was no problem at all. Together with his intellectuals, Dr. K. A. Busia was expected to turn Ghana into a paradise. What really happened?
Dr. Busia turned the heat on his political opponents while receiving instructions from Britain! So by the time Dr. Busia was overthrown, the whole country had become a vast railway passenger coach in which Ghanaians waited restlessly without knowing where the train would take them, nor even when it would start. The rest is history. We will live and die for Ghana.
Written by Clement Sangaparee, United Cadres Front, Obuasi East
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