Through whose efforts was UG established: True History and Distorted History
During his reign as king of Asanteman, and after he coming back from exile in 1924, Otumfuo Agyeman Prempeh I proposed to the British Government the establishment of a university in Kumasi.
That could not be done when he passed on in 1931. His successor, Otumfuo Osei Tutu Agyeman Prempeh II in 1935, he kept pushing for the university to fulfil the dream of his uncle, the late king.
Under governor, Sir Charles Noble Arden-Clarke, the Kumasi College of Technology was established on October, 6 1951 to fulfil the desire of the then Asantehene. Then on January 22, 1952 the Kumasi College of Technology was made the University College of Science and Technology, affiliated to the University of London.
On August 22, 1961, by Act of Parliament it became a full fletch university and renamed Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.
Back in 1945, the Walter Elliot Commission came out with two recommendations for the Crown to establish universities in West Africa. The majority recommendation called for two universities, one in Nigeria and the other in the Gold Coast.
The Minority recommendation called for one University of West Africa to be situated in Ibadan, Nigeria. The British Government accepted the latter. J.B. Danquah and the Youth Conference sent a strong protest to the Secretary of State, demanding a separate University College of the Gold Coast.
This protest was strongly supported by the Achimota Council, the Central Advisory Committee on Education and the Joint Provincial Council of Chiefs and others, and in the end the University College of the Gold College was founded in 1948.
On the University of Ghana’s webpage, Establishment of the University, this was what was stated in the second paragraph.
‘The Elliot Commission published a majority report which recommended the establishment of two University Colleges in the Gold Coast (Ghana) and Nigeria, and a minority report which held that only one University College for the whole of British West Africa was feasible.
The British Government at first accepted the minority report of the Elliot Commission and decided that a University College for the whole of British West Africa should be established at Ibadan in Nigeria. But the people of the Gold Coast could not accept this recommendation.
Led by the scholar and politician, the late Dr. J.B. Danquah, they urged the Gold Coast Government to inform the British Government that the Gold Coast could support a University College.
The British Government accordingly reviewed its decision and agreed to the establishment of the University College of the Gold Coast.’
That the University of Ghana had accepted the very important role, J.B. Danquah played in the establishment of the university, should not be questioned.
It is really sad that in this day and age, people who would not read the relevant and true history books are proudly demonstrating their ignorance and attacking anyone who suggests that the University of Ghana should be renamed after J.B. Danquah.
The irony is that even though Kwame Nkrumah had nothing to do with the establishment of the University of Science and Technology (UST) it was named after him in 1961. The NLC regime renamed it UST, even though I would have expected it to be renamed Agyeman Prempeh II University of Science and Technology. Then came Rawlings who through an Act of Parliament in 1998 renamed UST, back to Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
Interestingly, in the same year 1998, a certain Prof. Francis Agbodeka, came out with a book, A History of the University of Ghana: Half A Century of Higher Education 1948-1998, which according to those who read the book, gave no recognition to efforts made by J.B. Danquah who got support from influential bodies and institutions to force the British Government to establish a university college in the Gold Coast.
The question to ask is who was Francis Agbodeka and why Francis Agbodeka?
Prof Francis Agbodeka was born on December 31, 1931 and he was fourteen years old in 1945, when J.B. Danquah issued that strong protest and petition to the British administration to consider establishing a university in the Gold Coast.
Prof. Francis Agbodeka attended Achimota College in 1947 to 1952, the year the University College of the Gold Coast was established. From 1953 to 1956 he studied at the University College of the Gold Coast where he had his Bachelor of Arts. He proceeded to teach at the University of Cape Coast and was awarded a doctorate degree in history by the University of Ghana.
In 1978, Agbodeka moved to Nigeria where he taught history in the University of Sokoto and later the University of Benin, until 1986 when he retired at the age of 55.
Was he the right person to call upon to write the history of the University of Ghana? There were very good historians, in fact, better historians when it comes to writing history in this country and two of such were F.K. Buah and Albert Adu Boahen. In fact, with Adu Boahen, he should have been the obvious choice here.
Prof Albert Kwadwo Adu Boahen was born in 1932. From Mfantsipim College he went to the University College of the Gold Coast where he graduated in history in 1956. In 1959 he received a Ph.D. in African history from the School of Oriental and Africa Studies in London, as the first Ghanaian.
He was employed at the University College of the Gold Coast in 1959, and was a professor from 1971 to his retirement in 1990. He chaired the Department of History there from 1967 to 1975, as the first African to do so, and was Dean from 1973 to 1975. He also served on the editorial board of The Journal of African History published by Cambridge University Press and was a visiting professor at such institutions as the Australian National University in 1969, Colombia U in 1970 and the State University of New York in 1990 and 1991. Between 1993 and 1999, he also worked in the UNESCO committee that published the eight-volume workGeneral History of Africa.
For someone who worked as a lecturer and professor in History for thirty-one years in the University of Ghana, who is better placed to write the history of the university than him?
So, why Francis Agbodeka? As said somewhere above, in 1998, Rawlings through the Act of Parliament renamed UST to KNUST after Kwame Nkrumah, without considering the efforts Otumfuo Agyeman Prempeh II made in having that university established. It was simple matter of setting aside whatever good and positive things the perceived followers of NLM, then UP did for this country.
Ghanaians should remember that during that era, industries and businesses of perceived UP traditionalists in general and Asantes in particular were targeted and collapsed by the administration. It is probably in this vein that Francis Agbodeka was picked to write a history of the University of Ghana and he did a jaundiced job which today, anti-Uppists and pro-socialists are adoring like how Christians adore the Holy Bible.
The pro-socialists’ hatred for J.B. Danquah, clearly promotes this rejection of Danquah’s name being put on the University of Ghana.
Here is a case of by-passing, the chief linguist and your grandfather and going to your elder brother to ask about the history and tradition of your clan.The true account of the history of the University of Ghana is on its official website.
For what did Francis Agbodeka know about the University of Ghana to write its history, that Albert Adu Boahen does not know?
According to a write-up attributed to Hon Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa he stated most likely quoting from Agbodeka’s book that ‘credit cannot be taken away from the agitations of Gold Coasters between December 1945 and July 1946 at which period the Colonial Secretary in Accra was bombarded with petitions from such bodies as the Advisory Committee on Education, Achimota Council, the Standing Committee of the Joint Provincial Council of Chiefs, Asante Confederacy Council, Gold Coast Bar Association, Old Students Associations, Rodger Club, Accra; Hudson Club, Kumasi and Gold Coast Teachers Union.’
Strangely, there is no mention of the Youth Conference or even of a single individual who was very vocal in the petitions. This is strange.
Johnnie Bite also attempted convincing Ghanaians that University of Ghana should not be renamed and went to state the dangers of renaming national assets after politicians. He listed them as erosion of public trust; distraction of important issues;inflation of egos, establishment of a cult of personality and erasing of history. Wait a minute! Then what about all this Kwame Nkrumah this and Kwame Nkrumah that?
So, it is okay to name national assets after Kwame Nkrumah, where even he played no role in establishing, but it is wrong to do same for others who actually worked for those assets to be established.
And in 2018, the Communication Director of the CPP, Rauf Kadir after acknowledging J.B. Danquah’s great contributions in the history of this country, insisted that it was wrong ‘to give him some title that he never worked for, that actually will undermine the history of this country.’
Amazingly, there are history books which acknowledged the great efforts J.B. Danquah did and by rallying people and institutions behind him to fight for the university. And even if Prof. Francis Agbodeka put up a wishy-washy history about the University of Ghana, why was his scholarly work not accepted by the university, since on its website, the University of Ghana acknowledged J.B. Danquah and mention only his name as an individual who helped to establish the university?
We, Africans attack the West for writing jaundiced history about us, like David Livingstone saying he was the first human to discover the Niger River. But then we turn round to write jaundiced history about ourselves.
If the University of Ghana cannot be renamed after J.B. Danquah, then KNUST should be renamed UST, for Nkrumah played no role in its establishment.
Hon. Daniel Dugan
