Nomad_Africa_Edition12

election and plebiscite on the constitution
were held in 1960 and the constitution was
changed, which led to Kwame Nkrumah’s
election as the President of Ghana.
ECONOMIC LEGACIES
The economic legacies of President Nkrumah
include the building of Tema Township, the
Accra-Tema Motorway, Komfo Anokye Hospital
in Kumasi, University of Science and
Technology, University of Cape Coast, polytechnics
and second school around the country,
Akosombo Dam, Adome Bridge and
many more.
As a man passionate about education ever
since President Kwame Nkrumah, no other
government in Ghana has embarked on such
a massive infrastructural development. Some
of the infrastructures listed above still remain
the main infrastructure in many sectors of
Ghana. Notwithstanding the above economic
legacies, it has been suggested that when
President Nkrumah became the leader of
Ghana, Ghana had a much more promising
economy compared to countries such as the
then Ivory Coast, now C’ôte d’Ivoire.
No great man comes without faults. President
Nkrumah based substantial parts of his development
projects on the socialist model,
which was usually inferior in quality to the
Western standards. Thus, some of the factories
that he established would in the long run
not be viable. He wasted a lot of money on
his security, including using foreign personnel
as part of his secret service.
He also spent money on his ideological
school, which trained the young people he
indoctrinated through his young pioneer
movement. President Nkrumah gave about 10
million pounds of Ghanaian money to Guinea
because they were rebelling against France.
Consequently, France withdrew its financial
support to Guinea. This was a very inappropriate
and reckless decision, which would undoubtedly
remain the most serious financial
loss caused to the nation of Ghana. Ten million
pounds in 1960s translates to more than
450 million pounds in the value of today's currency,
assuming the amount had been invested
and earning an average interest rate
In 1957, Ghana was declared free by
their Prime Minister Nkrumah, as it became
a Commonwealth realm. With
years of hard work and political manoeuvering,
he declared his plans to
make Ghana a republic.
of 10% per year.
It appears that the ability of President
Nkrumah to build numerous infrastructure
projects in the early 1960s was primarily due
to the enormous amount of money his government
inherited from the British and the
high international price of cocoa at the time.
However, when the international price of
cocoa began to plummet, he was unable to
meet the challenges the economy faced.
Compounding the economic woes was the
endemic and rampant corruption among his
ministers and poor economic planning, which
also contributed to his economic failure.
From 1960 onwards, Dr Nkrumah begun to
suppress all forms of opposition, firstly, by
outlawing regional-based political parties in
Ashantiland, the North and the Volta region.
The opposition parties had no choice but to
unite. As the opposition parties came together
under one umbrella, Dr Nkrumah used
his parliamentary majority to ban all form of
opposition and declared Ghana a one party
state, and all forms of constructive criticism
were totally suppressed. Eventually, the situation
deteriorated to such a degree that all opponents
were brutally suppressed, including
people such as Dr J B Danquah, a prominent
Ghanaian politician and lawyer, who was arrested
on 8 January 1964 for allegedly being
implicated in a plot against the President. He
consequently suffered a heart attack and
died, while in detention at Nsawam Medium
Prison on 4 February 1965.
EXILE AND DEATH
In February 1966, soon after inaugurating the
Volta Dam, Kwame Nkrumah left on a peace
mission to end the Vietnam War, accompanied
by senior members of his government.
However, after years of political suppression,
the inevitable happened as is so frequently
the case with African politics - on 24 February
1966, while Kwame Nkrumah was on his
peace mission in Vietnam, he was overthrown
by a military coup.
A junta of army and police officers, the National
Liberation Council (NLC) took over
power and the Convention People’s Party
(CPP) was subsequently cut off from ordinary
citizens who had suffered from an increasingly
bad economic climate in Ghana, perpetuated
from one government to another.
After the military coup, Ghana strategically realigned
itself with other countries internationally
and also cut its close ties with Guinea and
the Eastern Bloc, thereby accepting a new alliance
with the Western Bloc. The government
also invited the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to take a leading
role in steering the economy.
Kwame Nkrumah never returned to Ghana
again and continued to push for his vision of
African unity. At first, He lived in exile in
Conakry, Guinea, as the guest of President
Ahmed Sékou Touré, who made him honorary
co-president of the country.
While reading, writing, corresponding and
entertaining guests and despite retirement
from public office, he still felt threatened by
Western intelligence agencies. This caused
him to live in constant fear of abduction and
assassination. In 1971 and in frail health, he flew
to Bucharest, Romania, for medical treatment,
but he succumbed to prostate cancer in April
1972 at the age of 62.
Nkrumah was buried in a tomb in the village
of his birth, Nkroful, Ghana. While the tomb
remains in Nkroful, his remains were transferred
to a large national memorial tomb and
park in Accra.
Kwame did leave a legacy for Africans, best
known politically for his strong commitment
to and promotion of Pan-Africanism. He was
inspired by the writings of black intellectuals
such as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and
George Padmore, and much of his understanding
and relationship to these men was
created during his years in America as a student.
Nkrumah became a passionate advocate of
the "African Personality", embodied in the slogan
"Africa for the Africans” viewing political
independence as a prerequisite for economic
independence. His dedication to Pan-Africanism
in action attracted many intellectuals to
his Ghanaian projects.
However, some would say Kwame
Nkrumah's biggest success in Pan-Africanism
was his significant influence in the founding
of the then Organisation of African Unity, now
the Africa Union (AU).
In his private life, Nkrumah married Fathia
Ritzk, an Egyptian Coptic bank worker and
former teacher, bearing him three children:
Gamal (born 1959), Samia (born 1960), and
Sekou (born 1963). Gamal is a newspaper
journalist, while Samia and Sekou are politicians.
Nkrumah also has another son, Francis
(born 1962).
“By far the greatest wrong, which the departing
colonialists inflicted on us, and which we
now continue to inflict on ourselves in our
present state of disunity, was to leave us divided
into economically unviable States,
which bear no possibility of real development….we
must unite for economic viability ”.
Kwame Nkrumah’s words will forever be
etched in the minds of Africans and never be
forgotten.
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