Nkrumahism and our times

By Ogunbiyi-Olubiyi Ojo

About 48 years ago, precisely on April 27, 1972, the greatest African of the last millennium- Dr. Kwame Kofi Nwia Nkrumah passed on in faraway Bucharest, Romania, after a long bout with cancer of the lungs. The whole world and indeed Africa became embroiled in mourning. Who then was this man who for decades bestrode African history like a colossus?

Kwame Nkrumah was born in Nkroful in Nzima district of Ghana on September 9, 1909; the son of a goldsmith and a rural woman- Madame Nyaneba. Educated at famous Achimota College where he graduated as a school teacher, he finally abandoned his earlier plans to be a priest for the quest of Golden Fleece in the America. He had been encouraged by the exploits of J.K.Aggrey, Wallace Johnson and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe- earlier sojourners in the United States in the pursuits of education. As indigent student, he tried his hands on many vocations to finance his studies and at the end of his studies; he had bagged degrees in Theology and Masters in Philosophy from Lincoln and Pennsylvania Universities.

His political activism began in the America where he-as a harbinger of the African Studies section- helped organized the African Students’ Association of American and Canada. Here it was that he acquainted himself with many political shades of opinions- Democrats, Republicans, Communists and Trotskyites. Having spent a decade in America, Nkrumah shifted base to London in May 1945, and there with nationalists as Ako Adjei, George Padmore, T.R. Makonnen, Peter Abrahams and Jomo Kenyatta successfully  organised  the Fifth African Congress in London in October 1945; calling the global attention to the plight of colonies and the need for their emancipation. Besides, his organisational abilities came to the fore again in the re-organisation and stabilisation of West African Students’ Union (WASU)

It was also in London that his Pan-African ideas were shaped and formulated by the help of George Padmore and Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, with whom he associated for the rest of their lives, and which remains were interred in Ghana. Having spent two years in London, his return to Gold Coast was facilitated by the invitation of United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC)- a political movement- to come home and take up the post of Secretary-General.

On his return, Nkrumah so organised and galvanised the political landscape of Gold Coast that by early 1948, the colonial authorities had considered him and other members of the executive committee of United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC)-tagged the ‘big six’ a security risk fit for arrest and prosecution to wit:- Dr. J.B Danquah, William Ofori Attah, Akufo Addo, Ako Adjei, Obetsebi Lamptey and Kwame Nkrumah. They were arrested and detained for few months in 1948; and this led to the making of the Coussey Constitution. In the same year, he founded the Ghana College and the Accra Evening News with the motto-“We prefer self-government with danger to servitude in tranquility.” His militancy and radical organisation of the UGCC led to a split within the big six and subsequent parting of ways with Nkrumah who then formed and led a nascent party –Convention People’s Party- CPP; which became the vanguard of the struggle for freedom.

In 1949, Kwame Nkrumah with his party and support of the youths and Trade Union organisations (dubbed by the Opposition elements as the “Veranda Boys”) declared National strike under the program of Positive Action fashioned after Mohandas Karamchund Gandhi’s (the Mahatma) passive resistance to force the abrogation of Coussey Constitution considered anti- people. The success of the action jolted the colonial authorities who arrested him and his colleagues; tried and handed down various terms of imprisonment. Suffice it is to say Nkrumah emerged from the position of “prison graduate to that of leader of government business”- thanks to the massive wins in the elections called by the colonial authorities in 1951. Unfolding events and developments led to the independence of Ghana otherwise known as Gold Coast on 6th March, 1957. On that historic occasion, Nkrumah declared that “the independence of Ghana was incomplete until linked with all African countries”. Here lied the seed of his Pan-Africanist posture which in turn led to the formation of African Union (then Organisation of African Unity) at Addis-Ababa in 1963. It also made Ghana a haven for African freedom fighters.

The emergence of Nkrumah’s black star state was a world historic event, touching the souls of black men everywhere. However, before long, Nkrumah’s growing intolerance with opposition, the corruption within his Convention People’s Party and his extravagant public spending marred his many achievements. On 22nd February, 1966, while on state visit to Beijing en-route Hanoi to mediate in the conflicts between the United States and North Vietnam, Nkrumah was toppled in a bloody coup a la Nigerian coup of 15th January, 1966. He was offered political asylum in the Republic of Guinea which became his home as a Co- President as announced in the welcome address of the then President Ahmed Sekou Toure. Nkrumah’s Ghana had rescued Guinea in 1958 when it voted for independence from France which withdrew abruptly, leaving Guinea prostrate.

In 1970, Nkrumah was diagnosed with cancer of the lungs, whereby he left the shores of Guinea for Bucharest, Romania where he died on 27th April, 1972 at the age of 62. The world and indeed the whole Africa stood still, till he was laid to rest at his home town of Nkroful, after resolution of a row over his body between Guinea and Ghana.

Today, as ever, we remember Kwame Nkrumah not for his adjudged excesses and that of his regime; but his Pan –Africanist posture culminating in the total liberation of entire Africa from colonialism; the pioneering of African Unity and the African High Command; and his dare-devil projection of the African personality world-wide. It is a known fact that unlike present and past African leaders, Nkrumah never accumulated wealth; not even having a house he could call his own. We are consoled however by the verdict of history that has been generous to him as the First Prime Minister and President of Ghana, the hero of African freedom fighters, the foremost architect of modern pan-Africanism, the terror of colonialism, the Osagyefo and above all the hero of African Nationalism.

The greatest tribute paid him was succinctly expressed by then Ghanaian Head of State, General Kutu Ignatius Acheampong when he said ‘his place in history is assured’. What an epithet later affirmed in 1999 by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) when Nkrumah was declared the African of the Millennium.