So can’t any politician gain some level of credibility and acceptability that can call for reward in our part of the world? Kwame Nkrumah was awarded the African Personality of the Century in 2000 and his adversaries saw it as nothing but a grand propaganda piece, just to spite the West.
It’s on record that the overthrow of the first Ghanaian President was masterminded by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). That of the ouster and barbaric murder of the first Congolese Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was also said to have been the handiwork of the CIA.
The 1960’s saw the zenith of the bi-polar cold war spearheaded by the West and the East. The Eastern bloc was led by Russia which later formed a confederacy with other Eastern European countries to become known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The United States was the self-imposed leader of the Western bloc. Any country or individual President who fell outside of the two super power blocs, became potential pawns in the ideological battle between the Soviet-led bloc and the American-led West.
The first batch of almost all of the liberation struggle leaders in Africa, South and Central America, some of who later became Heads of State of their respective countries, somehow became allies to the Soviet Union. It’s a choice that had its place in history.
The war of liberation waged by these African and other Third World nationalists, were mainly against Western European colonialists and naturally, in the early years of their independent struggle, you don’t expect them to be friends to their sworn enemies.
Interestingly, there were others who were opposed to the haste and the aggressiveness of the anti-West nationalists. The anti-early independent faction formed a bloc and held alliance with the West. These opposition groups professed the gradual handing over of power to indigenous or natives of the colonial territories.
That was in stark contrast to the radical stance of Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Mwalimu Nyerere and Co. The former group believed the African was not ready to manage his/her own affairs, especially within the political realm.
In Ghana, we had the United Party which was an amalgamation of some smaller opposition parties that went toe-to-toe with Nkrumah’s CPP government on ideological warfare, until the overthrow of the CPP on 24th February, 1966. Before their merger, the individual political groupings, some of which survived under purely ethnic support, had given ample evidence of what Nkrumah should expect from them after independent.
These individual political groups revolved round the Asante separatists, the National Liberation Movement (NLM), led by Baffuor Osei Akoto, the chief linguist to the Asantehene. Others included J.B. Daquah’s Ghana National Congress (GNC) and the Togoland Congress also known as the TransVolta Togoland (TVT) of Kojo Ayerke.
The rest were the Northern People’s Party (NPP 1), the biggest opposition party at the time, headed by Abayifa Karbo and S.D. Dombo; Adamafio’s Ga Shifimokpee and the Muslim Association Party (MAP).
The UP which has become one of Ghana’s two leading political traditions, was so opposed to Nkrumah that any of its offshoots becomes an automatic adversary of Kwame Nkrumah and any individual or groups that subscribe to Nkrumaist ideology.
It was therefore not surprising that most of the criticisms against Nkrumah’s African Personality of the Century Award came from the camp of the NPP and its antecedent— UP members and supporters.
Their hatred for Nkrumah centered on his (Nkrumah’s) decision to abandon the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), the only credible and recognized political party in the days leading up to independent, to form his own Convention People’s Party (CPP).
They also accused Nkrumah of gross human rights violations, during his reign as the first President of the First Republic. Nkrumah’s critics predicate his infamous Preventive Detention Act, where critical opposition elements of Nkrumah were summarily jailed without adequate and fair representation at the courts, as the worst period in the annals of Ghana’s political history.
Time for Nkrumaists and other anti-UP/NPP Akufo forces too, to malign Akufo Addo’s Forbes Award?
This level of cat and mouse politics has been trailing our political discourse from the 60’s to date. And so our President is awarded the Forbes African Personality of the Year and the conspiracy theories begin to emerge everywhere.
With jaundiced bias, predicated by intense partisanship, elements from the opposition side are adducing all manner of reasons why President Akufo Addo’s award cannot be genuine. One of the conspiracy theories is that the award was bought for the President by his financial and business backers. Really?
Who are these financiers? Are those financiers that faceless? If they think that positive about our President, couldn’t they have gone right away to purchase pages in the magazine to do their PR bidding? So this writer asks “how much did they pay Forbes Africa Magazine to warrant such a cover story?”
It must be stated that some prominent Ghanaian businessmen like Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, Dr. Kwabena Duffour among others, have all graced the cover pages of the Forbes Africa Magazine from 2016. While Dr. Nduom’s story dominated the pages in 2016, Dr. Kwabena Duffour had his turn in 2017.
Did these gentlemen also pay for their stories to be carried by Forbes Africa? As a magazine of such international repute, will Forbes Africa allow its editorial decisions to be diluted and influenced by money to destroy their hard won reputation?
Then, there is again another of the discredited attempts. These critics of the Akufo Addo award believe the one who schemed, orchestrated and masterminded the award was one Alex Amankwaa, one of the editorial heads at the Forbes Africa magazine.
Amankwaa, as the rumour mill grinds, is a direct cousin of the Ghanaian President and therefore used his influence to get his elder cousin to appear in the lead pages of Forbes Africa as the “African Personality of the Year.” Now the logical question: “Is Amankwaa, a one-man editorial board of such international magazine to make any such unilateral decision.”
Professor Lumumba’s critique of the award has also not helped with the intended purpose of the award. According to the renowned African Public Speaker, Nana’s award was very disappointing, because the Ghanaian leader gave a lot of promises, but yet to deliver any tangible results.
He was reacting particularly, to this quote from Forbes Africa on the award: “Ghana’s President has repositioned the country in the global market place as one reliant on its own resources and strengths.”
However, the learned Prof alluded to the fact that “if I had any doubt in my mind, the young men and women who are now rising up in the streets of Accra are saying with me ‘Nana we thought you were on the right path but you have now taken an about turn and you are moving with jet like speed, in the direction that we don’t want to move.’”
Very fair assessment on the award. PLO Lumumba feels Akufo Addo has diverted from his promised tangent; thus giving contrasting meanings to rhetoric and the facts on the ground. And with such contrasting leadership, he thus wants to know if the quote is a true reflection of the man Forbes Africa is urging the rest of Africa to celebrate today. He never adduced any conspiracy theories to why our President does not deserve the award.
Content created and supplied by: RKeelson (via Opera News )
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