Love For Nkrumah by The Great Hypocrites (1)
Kwabena Amikaketo sat in his favourite chair on his balcony viewing the setting sun which was making way for the shadows to grow longer, and soon cover his part of the world like a dark blanket.
The chilly weather is now gradually abating, making way for the warm spells before the heat finally arrived.
Today, Kwabena was very angry about what he believed were determined plots by socialists in Ghana to make the lie look like the truth and the truth considered the lie.
There has been so much love for Nkrumah being portrayed by these reckless nation wreckers who want to twist and turn history just to suit their wicked and selfish desires.
Kwabena knew he was getting angry and this always got him when politicians seek to deceive the people just for their sole benefit. That is why he decided not to be a politician to even become partisan. He loved and cherished saying things as they are.
The facts to Kwabena are that there is a section of Ghanaians who claim to be Nkrumaist and call themselves socialists and revolutionary.
Even though they hold themselves as disciples of Nkrumah, they are never under one umbrella. You may find a socialist preaching socialism and Nkrumah, but when you refer to the Limann administration, he would tell you in the face that the People’s National Party was not a socialist party. And so, what was it?
As for Rawlings and his regimes, just do not go there. The only one they may all support is the AFRC, where they chanted “Let the Blood Flow,” and encouraged Rawlings to insensitively murder, innocent Ghanaians to save the lives of about ninety crooks and economic saboteurs.
Kwabena, posed a question, in fact he rather identified a problem. And it is that there is every indication that Nkrumah was not loved by his own.
Firstly, the outcome of the Kulungugu assassination attempt on Nkrumah revealed that from within, Nkrumah had carnivorous enemies.
Among the five people hurled before the courts, three were top ranking CPP members made up of two cabinet ministers and a national executive officer. The court found the three not guilty.
Then in a rage, Nkrumah coursed a law to be passed which enabled him to set aside court rulings and even dismiss all the judges from the bench and this happened on December 23, 1963 when Parliament passed that bill and Nkrumah assented to it on December 24, 1963.
He appointed a new chief justice and ordered a re-trial, which in conclusion found all three CPP men guilty as charged. That was the fate of Ako-Adjei, Tawiah Adamafio and C. Crabbe.
Kwabena contemplated that if indeed those three were guilty of the crime, why would they, as true Nkrumaists plan to kill Nkrumah?
If indeed they were innocent as the first court determined, then who informed the mind of Nkrumah to make sure that they were guilty at all cost? What was that person covering up?
Was there a group of CPP activists who wanted Nkrumah dead? It certainly looked like that in this case scenario of the Kulungugu bombing affairs. No amount mudslinging on the United Party as the guilty one will ever wash.
The fact is in the end three of top CPP men were found guilty of attempting to kill Nkrumah, and why should it be so?
As at 1960, there was a split in the CPP. Nkrumah and his socialist colleagues formulated his new ideology which he first called African Socialism, then Nkrumahism and finally Consciencism.
The active practice of socialism proved Nkrumah’s first tactical mistake for the majority of his own cabinet members, most of the party officials, most members of parliament and most of the rank and file of the party. They were opposed to the socialist reconstruction of the society.
So, from 1960 onwards, the CPP was split into two: the anti-socialist group were led by Krobo Edusei, W.A. Wiafe, C.K.K. Baah and K.A. Gbedemah. The socialist group was led by Kofi Baako and Tawiah Adamafio.
Even within the socialist group, which was clearly in the minority, there was a division which on one side, people like, Kofi Batsa, S.G. Ikoku, Heyman, Tawiah Adamafio, K. Amoako-Atta, and T.D. Baffoe, going for scientific socialism and very much opposed to the adaptation of Marxism to African conditions.
On the other side those who supported the adaptation included Kofi Baako and Kwaku Boateng.
The second period of the CPP saw a spilt party with one side against the other and Nkrumah spent a great deal of time playing one group against the other, trying to maintain party unity.
(Ref: Chapter 21 of Ghana: Evolution and Change in the Nineteenth to Twentieth Centuries – Adu Boahen).
It is quite obvious from this account that there were CPP members who wanted Nkrumah dead, Kulungugu was one example and another was the Accra Bombings where most of those arrested were CPP elements.
The question of why Nkrumah could be an enemy to people within his own party where he was equated to a god, is answered in the above scenario.
That explained why to this day, socialists in Ghana have never been able to unanimously agree on what form of socialism is the best. They are still divided to this day, especially with some proclaiming that Limann’s PNP was not a socialist government. That is why today, the socialist parties are not united.
Just as a parent who plays by the divide and rule strategy, and creates division among his children, would be wished dead by some of them, so Nkrumah also had his real enemies within his party and government who wished him dead.
After he was overthrown in 1966, many of his own top government and party officials openly denied him. Kwabena attempted to recollect whether any Progress Party government or party official ever denied K.A. Busia, but nothing clicked in.
Some of the CPP gurus who definitely wanted to see Nkrumah finished, could go to him in Conakry Guinea and scammed him off hard currency with the assurance that they were going to stage a coup to restore him, but rather use the money to go to Europe and the US to start a new life all over again.
Kwabena sat calmly and pitied Nkrumah as it clearly demonstrated that some activities from 1981 to date clearly proved that most of the people, especially, the vociferous ones, who professed Nkrumah do not like him.
1). The December 31, 1981 coup that toppled the only united Nkrumaist party after CPP to have formed government was spearheaded by known Nkrumaists, like Kojo Tsikata, Ebo Tawiah, Ato Austin and P.V. Obeng to name a few.
Rawlings was a just an ideologically confused character who in seeking his own wealth and recognition led that coup, because in truth he was a radical capitalist reformist.
2). To find Nkrumaists rushing and falling over one another to join Rawlings to entrench his government of the PNDC and now the NDC is beyond comprehension, and maybe even beyond divine reasoning.
One socialist, Explo Nani-Kofi, caught Rawlings saying on June 5, 1981 that “when Nkrumah was destroying this country, the hero of all ages, Kotoka, my hero, overthrew Nkrumah to liberate the people of Ghana.” And yet this socialist willingly chose to work for and with the PNDC.
It was also stated somewhere that Rawlings proudly said he was the best head of state Ghana ever had, because all Kwame Nkrumah gave Ghana was a flag and a national anthem.
In all this the socialists gathered to join him to form and entrench his parties and policies on Ghana and Ghanaians but at the least opportunity would hail Nkrumah as their hero and their god, because Nkrumah never dies, or so they say.
3). In 1982, when opportunity came for invasion into the country by Ghanaian dissident soldiers, Kwesi Pratt Jnr, after getting wind of it from Kweku Baako Jnr and his colleagues, took a full packet of cigarette and a bottle of brandy and went to Gonda Barracks to tell on his bosom friend Kweku Baako, who gave him room and bed to perch in his house and also fed him.
Kweku and his colleagues were summarily arrested and jailed. Kwesi would later go on to defend himself that he was against foreign invasion to change government in this country.
He should be asked whether he was not aware of the invasion by the Libyans who helped toppled his own socialist government of the PNP and if he was, what did he do about it?
4). For the PNDC and NDC to have CPP elements making up the overwhelmingly majority, is quite legendary, in view of the fact these are the people who consider Nkrumah as their lord and their god.
Instead of preserving his legacy so that he could remain forever in the minds of all Ghanaians, they chose to first portray Rawlings as the next after Nkrumah and in fact Nkrumah reincarnated.
They picked up the PNDC and moulded it into a tradition which became greater and stronger than the CPP/Nkrumah’s tradition.
Just as this evening on the balcony was getting interesting, his beloved Echelle came calling that it was time for bed.
God willing tomorrow shall also come, he sighed himself to bed.
Hon. Daniel Dugan
