CPP Has Absolutely No Vision for Ghana!!!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Maybe he missed his calling, for it appears that rather than studiously pursue his occupational and professional disciplinary field of Economics, Dr. Nii Moi Thompson, the rump-CPP spokesman on Finance and Economic Affairs, has decided to ill-advisedly add the sub-discipline of postcolonial Ghanaian political history onto his burden and, in the process, this otherwise passably productive young Economist (I believe he is a little younger than this writer) has been making a nuisance of himself. I have, for the most part, been following his political intrigues at a respectable distance for a couple of years now, and once even responded to some woefully misguided remarks that he made, regarding postcolonial Ghanaian history.

Having since decided not to engage people who, for some curious reasons, prefer to dabble in issues out of their league and glaringly beyond their ken, I was, charitably, going to let this slide by. Unfortunately, Dr. Thompson has made the kind of outrageous judgment call that is apt to provoke The Three Great Oaths of the Asantehene (I mean, Ntamkesee Mmiensa), or The Wednesday Kwanyaako Oath of the Okyenhene (Wukuada Ne Kwanyaako). And on the latter score, I must hasten to add that both Kwanyaako and Kumasi have played a vital role in my life, equally as vital, of course, as Kyebi and Adadientem.

And so when Dr. Thompson brazenly declares that the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has a “poverty of vision,” he leaves us with no other alternative but to riposte that the leadership of both the original Convention People’s Party (CPP) and the rump-CPP, now headed miserably and desperately by an internally besieged Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, had (and have) absolutely no vision worthy of a national discourse (see “NPP Has ‘Poverty of Vision’ – CPP.” Ghanaweb.com 7/14/08). And the preceding precisely explains why the CPP’s 1966 overthrow was greeted with popular support all over the country, all facile attempts to cynically invoke the pretext of external forces notwithstanding.

What appears to have provoked Dr. Thompson into verbally assaulting the integrity of the ruling New Patriotic Party regards the recent sale of majority shares of Ghana Telecom to some non-Ghanaians. Dr. Thompson, an Economist by trade, has chosen rather unwisely to mix his woefully misguided sense of patriotism with the crucial economic development of Ghana; and that is exactly why he is able to come up with such sophomoric observations as the following: “We have a situation where [sic] our national football team is seemingly [sic] never entrusted to a Ghanaian, our water [system?] is in the hands of the Dutch, our roads are built by the Chinese [instead of Nana P. S. K. Ampadu?], the Presidential Palace is being built by Indians, [our] waste [sewage system?] by the Belgians and our Telecom sector is now earmarked for an Anglo-American company” (Ghanaweb.com 7/14/08).

Perhaps somebody ought to remind the rump-CPP spokesman that both the Akosombo Dam and VALCO were not only built by Italians and Anglo-Americans, but even more criminally embarrassingly, President Nkrumah virtually and literally signed off on the most senseless contractual agreement ever ratified in postcolonial Ghanaian history, by guaranteeing that while Ghana picked up the tab for more than half the cost of Akosombo and VALCO, the country would effectively be denied its fair share of profits accruing from these seminal industrial ventures for at least 30 years or one-human generation. Somebody had better also apprised the CPP spinmeister of the fact of the Indian military, as well as the Russians and East Germans, having partly trained the Ghana Armed Forces under Nkrumah’s own CPP regime! You see, it is such abject historiographical ignorance, on the part of the pontifical likes of Dr. Nii Moi Thompson, that discourages this writer from seriously engaging this new breed of rump-CPP charlatans. And to be certain, where their predecessors were mean-spirited know-nothing copycats – just listen to the very unimaginative name of the CPP – the new generation of these benighted pseudo-socialist scam-artists tote impressive advance degrees in disciplines in which they know virtually next to nothing. And so, perhaps what we ought to be talking about is the caliber of Ghanaian intellectuals and professionals that discourage fiscally responsible governments, such as the NPP, from entrusting them with vital national institutions, rather than fatuously impugning the nationalities of professionals who prove themselves to be technically and professionally competent enough to be entrusted with our national development projects.

Perhaps we also ought to remind the historically challenged and amnesiac likes of Dr. Thompson that among President Nkrumah’s first order of business as Commander-in-Chief of Independent and Sovereign Ghana, was to appoint an Anglo-Irish leftist British parliamentarian, Sir Geoffrey Bing, co-architect of the odious Preventive Detention Act (PDA) and one who turned out to have merely been a patronizing and ruthless mercenary, as Ghana’s Attorney-General. Now let Dr. Nii Moi Thompson look his fellow Ghanaians in the eye and tell us whether by 1957, absolutely no Ghanaian qualified for the job of Attorney-General? In sum, it would be far better for the rump-CPP spokesman to tell Ghanaian voters precisely what advantage a ruling rump-CPP government would possess over a nonesuch progressive New Patriotic Party and stop incessantly embarrassing Ghanaian intellectuals both at home and abroad. And here must also be plainly and simply pointed out to the CPP spokesman and his ilk, that in a global and cosmopolitan economy, professional and technical competence trumps mere sloganeering patriotism. In other words, merely chanting such patriotic and nationalist slogans as “Black Pride,” “Ghana First” and “Africa for Africans” never put plantains, kenkeys, yams, akyekes, akples or tuozaafis on anybody’s dinner table. And the sooner these pseudo-socialists wake up to maturely and creatively confront our brave new world, as it were, the better it would serve us all. And isn’t it worrisome to any of these grizzled Nkrumah fanatics that even China and Russia, the global bulwarks of socialism are, today, enviably engaged in progressive and wealth-creating democratic-capitalist entrepreneurship?

It may also interest these unregenerate Nkrumaists to learn that a “Black Pride”-touting President Nkrumah had a bona fide white-British woman, Ms. Erica Powell, for private secretary. Does Dr. Thompson really believe that in 1957, absolutely no Ghanaian professionally qualified to be employed as Secretary to then-Prime Minister (later President) Nkrumah? Come on!

How about the fact that Ghana’s Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Alexander, the man who, reportedly, stood idly by while Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was arrested and brutally assassinated, was a white-Briton? Needless to say, to-date, heavy question marks remain to be resolved, regarding the extent to which President Nkrumah was either unwittingly complicit in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, or that he was, curiously, an active participant! Then again, let Dr. Thompson tell his audience which Ghanaian companies built the State House and the Banquet Hall and Conference Center; also Flagstaff House and the Independence Arch. And just which Ghanaian national owned Kassardjian, the renowned construction company?

We also just wanted to remind the likes of Dr. Thompson the fact that the Show Boy’s first expression of his “Black Pride,” was his quite expensive and patently quixotic importation of an Egyptian woman, Fathia, about half his age, for Ghana’s First Lady. The irony of the whole situation was the fact that Nkrumah was to confess later in life that even as an apparently popular President of Ghana, he was, perhaps, at once the loneliest and unhappiest soul on Earth. He would also add that he neither believed in the sanctity and integrity of marriage, nor did he believe in the Biblical concept of conjugal bliss. And while we are still on the marriage question, Dr. Thompson: Don’t you think it would have made far better sense for then-Prime Minister Nkrumah to have married one of those Accra Market Women who constantly had to fork up bail money to get the trouble-prone African Show Boy (or was it a Show-Horse?) out of the slammer (or jail)?

Really, the pity of it all is that in arrogantly presuming to impugn the integrity of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Thompson actually ended up shilling for his own party’s arch-rival, the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC). The preceding notwithstanding, anybody who actually believes, like Dr. Nii Moi Thompson, that Ghana’s Life Expectancy Rate was higher, and thus the quality of life better, under the extortionate regime of the so-called Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC), must be living a pipe dream. Couple the preceding with Dr. Thompson’s claim that the P/NDC presided over a higher National Literacy Rate than the NPP (and I sincerely don’t think even Messrs. Rawlings and Atta-Mills believe such swill), and Dr. Thompson may, indeed, not be very far from being committed to either the Accra Mental Hospital (Asylum) or Ankaful. Perhaps the rump-CPP spokesman also believes that the NPP, it was, that auctioned off the Ghana Industrial Holdings Corporation (GIHOC) at far below the going market values?

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 17 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005) and “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected].