‘Declare Nkrumah’s birthday, national holiday’

Friday January 30 2009 Page 9
Story: Daniel Nkrumah & Leticia Ohene Asiedu
THE Kwame Nkrumah Foundation has appealed to President J.E.A. Mills to initiate steps towards making the birthday of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, September 21, a national holiday.
At the launch of the centenary celebrations of the birth of the country’s first President in Accra last Wednesday, the President of the foundation, Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa, extolled the virtues and achievements of Dr Nkrumah in a 20-page speech and declared that his legacy still lived on.
Born in Nkroful in the Western Region on September 21, 1909, Dr Kwame Nkrumah is considered as the main icon of Africa’s liberation struggle and was voted the Black personality of the Millennium by the BBC at the turn of the century.
“The time has come for Ghana to honour its greatest patriot . . . We are confident that HE, the President, will in 2009, the centenary year of his birth, pay Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah this well-earned tribute,” Prof. Akosa told a packed hall, which included Nkrumaists such as K.S.P. Jantuah, Edward Mahama, Ladi Nylander, Dr Abu Sakara and Sekou Nkrumah.
Prof. Akosa said Nkrumah’s dream of a developed Ghana in which the welfare of the people was the benchmark for determining the quality of governance had not yet been attained.
He defined Nkrumaism as scientific socialism in the African context, of which equal opportunities and social justice, self-determination and pan Africanism were the three pillars.
Prof. Akosa described Dr Nkrumah as a man who believed so much in parliamentary democracy and dismissed assertions that the country’s first President was a dictator and an autocrat.
He said Dr Nkrumah was instrumental in bringing together disparate opposition groupings of 1954 and 1956 and even suggested the name, United Party, which was adopted by the opposition. “This is not a mark of a dictator,” he averred.
He argued that the fact that Nkrumah believed in educating his people suggested that he was determined to empower his people intellectually to be able to challenge him.
Prof. Akosa said one of Kwame Nkrumah’s greatest achievements was in the area of education and added that “almost all Ghanaians alive today benefited from the free and compulsory education”.
He described as “legitimate and justified” the Prevention Detention Act (PDA) that was passed in July, 1958 and remarked that Dr Nkrumah’s government would have been irresponsible if it had not passed that Act.
Prof. Akosa also said any claim that Nkrumah was corrupt represented one of the greatest lies ever told, stressing that the man worked for the development of all and not himself.
Activities planned to commemorate the 100 anniversary of the birth of Dr Kwame Nkrumah include a candle light vigil on the eve of February 24, the day he was overthrown.
On March 5, there shall be the re-enactment of the declaration of independence while on April 27, there shall be a wreath-laying ceremony at the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum.
On June 11, the eve of the founding of the CPP, there shall be a candle-light vigil while a press conference has been scheduled for Republic Day, 1st July, on Republicanism.
On August 1, there shall be the commemoration of the Kulungugu bomb while in September, there is expected to be the 2009 edition of the three-day annual Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Public lectures.
Also, on the night of September 20, there shall be a candle-light vigil at Nkroful and on the morning of September 21, the foundation shall attend a mass at the Roman Catholic Church, Nkroful.
According to Prof. Akosa, after the mass, the procession shall move to the original mausoleum in Nkroful for prayers and libation and a birthday cake shall be cut.
That same day there shall be a party at the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum in Accra at 7 pm.
In December, there shall be reflections on the life of Dr Nkrumah and individuals who knew and worked with him are expected to give their accounts of the country’s first President.