Who Stole Nkrumah’s Dignity? (Part 1)

It has remained posted on the Internet for some time now, except that while its title seemed interesting, if only because of its quaintness, the hectic schedule of yours truly rendered it quite unappealing for him to promptly get to it. Pontifically and rather presumptuously titled “Restore Nkrumah's Dignity – Prof. Akosa”( Daily Guide 6/23/07), the news article offered pathetically far less than its caption promised. And the blame, in no way, lay at the feet of the proverbial messenger.

And, of course, knowing what he has known about the infamous Convention People's Party (CPP), or The Party's, ideologues, having himself had a father who was a staunch supporter of the CPP and an ardent advocate of Nkrumaism, yours truly found the caption of the article to be all too predictable. And before delving into its piddling contents, he had already, and aptly, determined that this was merely about the brazen rantings of an thoroughgoing political opportunist attempting, rather porously and quite ineffectually, to ride on the crest of the late deposed and disgraced dictator's dubious and mixed achievements to clinch an undeserved political capital.

Of course, the most recent, largely polite gesture of the pro-Danquah-Busia ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) to readily and aptly recognize the remarkable, albeit scarcely phenomenal, contribution of the putative African Show Boy to the development of postcolonial Ghana must, predictably, have been taken the wrong way by many an ardent and outright fanatical Nkrumaist. In sum, desperate to revive the infamous Convention People's Party regime, but apparently woefully bereft of any creative imagination, an asset that is indubitably indispensable in post-Nkrumah political culture, particularly in the liberalist and democratic Kufuor era, some of yesteryear's Young Pioneer tin-heads have decided to take the easy way to power, feverishly banking, of course, on the short memories, abject ignorance and sheer youthfulness of the majority of the Ghanaian electorate who had either just been born or had yet to be conceived in the wake of the Show Boy's auspicious and landmark overthrow on February 24, 1966.

Another interesting aspect of the newsmaker that piqued yours truly's attention was his name. And after inquiring from some quite knowledgeable informants vis-à-vis the familial background of Prof. Agyeman-Badu Akosa, I learned to both my pleasant surprise and utter amusement that, indeed, the immediate-past Director-General of the Ghana Health Services is the son of the quite well-known Mr. J. C. Akosa, my maternal grandfather's old student at the Asante-Mampong Presbyterian Primary and Middle Schools, the “Middle” of which was actually wholly founded by the Rev. T. H. Sintim, and the “Primary” of which was partially founded by my grandfather. For when the Rev. T. H. Sintim arrived at Asante-Mampong in either 1924 or 1925, the Mampong Presbyterian School went only up to the Third Grade (or Class Three). And during the seven, long and turbulent years that my grandfather spent, incognito, in his own maternal, ancestral home, the future Rev. T. H. (Yawbe) Sintim, of Akyem-Begoro and Asiakwa, would extend the Mampong Presbyterian School to the Tenth Grade (or Standard Seven) and witness the pioneer graduating class under his tutelage as both teacher and head-teacher of the school.

The interesting aspect – in quite a quizzical way, of course – of my grandfather's arrival at Asante-Mampong inheres in its wholly accidental nature. The old man had initially been appointed as the first Ghanaian and African head-teacher at the Adum Presbyterian Primary School, but the Asantes of Kumasi found it rather abominable to have an “Okyeni” (or “Akyemkwaa”) for their teacher, much less the head-teacher of the old, glorious Asante Empire. And so, naturally, they threatened him with death by both machete and gunshot; and it was upon the earnest pleas of the European missionaries in charge of the station, as it was then called – I believe represented by the person of the Rev. Ramseyer, or some such missionary – that the Mamponghene, Nana Amaniampong, decided to retain the services of my young grandfather. And for the next seven years, he would be known as “Teacher Sintim, the Okyeni,” until on the eve of his departure when my grandfather would reveal to their bruising shame and anguish that, indeed, the future Rev. T. H. Sintim was the maternal nephew of the Mamponghene via his mother, Mary Akosua Baadua's Akyem-Begoro Bretuo Clan.

Interestingly enough, my grandfather never told this story to yours truly himself, for it appears, in retrospect, to have traumatized him to no end. In fact, it was my grandmother who regaled me with this painful past (in the teary-eyed) presence of the man who, all he wanted to do was to faithfully and diligently serve his country and his people, regardless of ethnicity, culture or creed.

Now, what does any of this have to do with Prof. Agyeman-Badu Akosa? And the simple answer is that the man who inordinately vaunts of Nkrumah having singularly facilitated the education of virtually every modern Ghanaian is being here called upon to be humbled and sobered by the simple fact that had it not been for the sheer magnanimity and inviolable conscience of the likes of Teacher Sintim, in this particular context, amidst an unhealthy flurry of anti-Akyem aspersions and innuendoes, Mr. J. C. Akosa, Prof. Akosa's father, would not have attended school beyond the third or fourth grade. And on the latter score, legend has it that the future CPP District Commissioner was forced to withdraw from school for having impregnated a young woman, for “J. C.” was said to be a little advanced for his grade level. It would be then-Teacher Sintim, not Prime Minister Nkrumah, who would intercede to ensure that then-Master J. C. Akosa would go on to complete Standard Seven and be duly issued a Middle School-Leaving Certificate or diploma.

Also quite interesting is the fact Teacher Okoampa, yours truly's late father, a Serwaa-Amaniampong Technical School Teacher, CPP District Organizer and Young Pioneer Patron had also served as J. C. Akosa's Campaign Manager (in fact, the very day of my birth, my old man was nearly killed in a motor accident while campaigning for D.C. Akosa).

But, of course, the point I want to make here is that in his mature years, albeit reluctantly, my father would aptly come to envisage the Convention People's Party for what it had veritably been, an immitigably autocratic, extortionate and outright misguided, albeit an incontrovertibly well-intentioned, political juggernaut.

And so it is rather interesting for Prof. Agyeman-Badu Akosa to foolhardily assert, as reported by the Daily Guide, that “the Preventive Detention Act (PDA)[,] introduced by Kwame Nkrumah[,] was legitimate and necessary[,] considering the scale of destructive nature of the opposition who were at that time bent on assassinating him” (6/23/07).

Perhaps Prof. Akosa would have done himself and his audience better service by explaining exactly upon what evidentiary basis Dr. J. B. Danquah, arguably Ghana's foremost Constitutional Lawyer of his generation, deserved to be brutally assassinated at the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison, without having been conceded his basic human right to a judicial trial, by then-President Kwame Nkrumah. Likewise, Prof. Akosa ought to have substantively justified exactly what made it legitimate for President Nkrumah to have callously and summarily ordered the removal of Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey from the Intensive-Care Ward of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital back to Nsawam and live-burial, reportedly, on the strength of dubious evidence of sedition, which even Nkrumah's own British Attorney-General and Queen's Counsel (QC), Sir Geoffrey Bing, acknowledged could not have been scientifically, or objectively, sustained in any legitimately-constituted court of law? (see Bing's Reap The Whirlwind).

Indeed, a recent editorial published by the Ghanaian Statesman newspaper, and captioned “Prof. Akosa Should Have Been More Politically Surgical” (6/22/07), was dead-on apt in pointing out that while, indeed, he may be a “brilliant” pathologist, as a politician, the former director-general of the Ghana Health Services is fast becoming notorious for speaking out of his league, and thus grossly out of turn. The aforementioned editorial wittily concluded: “Our generous advice to Prof. Akosa is to redefine, redesign and refocus his political approach or he risks making himself irrelevant – and there are so many of them [political charlatans?] cat-walking the corridors of Nkrumaism these days, sadly [enough]. [And] we expect his critique[s] to be deeper than we have so far heard.”

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., teaches English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].