As a presidential candidate, Mr. Akuffo Addo was glib and smooth-talking. Not surprisingly, he was able to entice Ghanaian voters with his boatload of grandiose promises.
To his credit, once in office, Mr. Addo has moved quickly to fulfill some of those eye-watering, sky is the limit campaign promises.
But one thing, Mr. Addo deliberately omitted in his litany of promises and which he smartly concealed from Ghanaians was his carefully hatched agenda to settle political scores by rewriting, whitewashing and distorting Ghanaian history, especially as it pertains to the founder of the nation, the vastly popular and venerable Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
Mr. Addo’s recently disclosed intention to set aside August 4th as a day to celebrate Ghana’s founders including the Big Six and September 21st as Kwame Nkrumah’s Day gives us a glimpse into the mindset of Mr. Addo which can aptly be described as hell bent on righting perceived wrongdoings.
But what is more disturbing and intensely annoying is the fact that Mr. Addo’s dubious intention is designed to paper over and minimize the historic and outstanding achievements and contributions of Dr. Nkrumah, marginalize his place in our history and ultimately cast him as a political villain.
Clearly, Mr. Addo is a bitter man, enraged by the apparent past bad blood between his family and the great one, Dr. Nkrumah, and is using the power of the presidency to finally get even.
Need l stress that Mr. Addo is playing with our cherished history, and my hope is that he is stopped in his tracks by public opinion before he causes irreparable damage .
Lets recall a little history here: Independence movements around Africa had charismatic leaders, individuals who were principled and driven by a passion to lead their people to freedom and all that it entailed. They consequently did not hesitate to sacrifice their time and lives in pursuit of those goals.
The likes of Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Gamel Abdul Nasser of Egypt, Obafemi Awolowo of Nigeria, and Nelson Mandela of South Africa were great political leaders of their time who fought tooth and nail to free their nations from the chains of colonialism and apartheid.
The last time I checked, these former political heavyweights have not been confined to the scrapheap of their nations’ histories…in death, they are still revered, hugely respected and held in high esteem by their country men and women.
Yet in Ghana, the opposite is true; the memory of Dr. Nkrumah who gallantly led the fight for independence from Britain is being deliberately sabotaged by a man blinded by rage and an unbridled desire to salvage the name of his family.
I don’t know if Mr. Addo is aware of the anger that he has stirred with his pitiful and weak attempts to rewrite our national history. He ought to be told in no uncertain terms that some historical facts are etched in stone and nothing, not even his calculating determination, can change that.