Ablakwa’s anti-Akufo-Addo insult will not change the real facts of Ghana’s history

Having criminally defied the Wood Supreme Court’s order to return the legitimately purchased landed and real-estate properties of the late Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, the former Information Minister, with the equally criminal complicity of then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, the main opposition National Democratic Congress’ parliamentary representative for North-Tongu, in the Volta Region, may be living in a fool’s paradise and, in fact, be playing with a nuclear touch-button, as well, if he thinks for even a split-second that he can prevent the necessary and inevitable rectification of Ghana’s history by casually presuming that, somehow, Ghanaians who were of age at the birth of our country’s postcolonial history are too daft to fully appreciate the immutable fact that Ghana is neither the singular political handicraft of either Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, our country’s first postcolonial leader, or the Convention People’s Party (CPP) which the latter cofounded and led for some 17 years (See “ ‘Akufo-Addo Is Playing with Fire; We’ll Resist His New Holidays’ – Ablakwa” CitiNewsRoom.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/14/18).

To be certain, the Public Holidays Amendment Act, which is currently before Ghana’s Parliament, could not have come at a more opportune moment. In fact, it is actually long overdue. Indeed, those of us who have studied the objective facts of Ghana’s history are well aware of the fact that August 4, 1947, and not June 12, 1949, as the fascistic likes of Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa would have the rest of us believe, marks the watershed moment of the first serious wave of agitation for the reassertion of Ghana’s sovereignty against British colonial rule. The 1956 United Nations-sponsored Plebiscite, which made the ancestors and parents of the North-Tongu NDC-MP bona fide Ghanaian citizens, was nearly a decade into the future. In sum, Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa would do himself and his followers great good to go back to the History Department of the Danquah-championed University of Ghana, Legon, or even the Kumasi-based Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and humbly imbibe the true facts of Ghanaian history of the period leading up to our declaration of Independence in 1957.

At any rate, the former Deputy Information and Education Minister spoke grossly out of turn on the issue of the proposal to make August 4 and January 7 statutory holidays. The latter date, of course, marks the Presidential Inauguration Day, whilst August 4 (Mankessim) marks the historically seismic founding of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), the first serious attempt by the leaders and people of Ghana to clamor for the establishment of democratic governance. Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa grossly spoke out of turn because the North-Tongu NDC-MP is his party’s Spokesman on Foreign Affairs, not on Constitutional Affairs or Governance. This clearly goes to show how grossly disorganized or disarrayed the country’s main opposition political party may be. The fact of the matter is that whether he is able to mass up a coalition of one-million or five-million Ghanaians to protest this most laudable and rational attempt to rectify the deliberately distorted facts of Ghana’s history will not matter. Scholastic evidence cannot be eviscerated by threats of mob action.

And, by the way, Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa had better not criminally fall afoul of the law or he will have himself to blame in perpetuity. The restoration of Ghana to its real historical richness and greatness and epistemic truth and objectivity cannot be subjected to the politics of noetic self-infatuation. Whoever was the first to declare “Knowledge” as being synonymous with “Power,” definitely had Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa in mind. It would be wasteful to say “A word to the wise…” because the North-Tongu MP is not known to appreciate proverbs and idiomatic expressions.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

December 14, 2018

E-mail: [email protected]