Come on, the “Convention” in CPP Belongs to Danquah and Paa Willie!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Nov. 1, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

I couldn’t stop my sides from splitting with laughter, when I read news of a warning letter allegedly written by Nii Armah Akomfrah, General-Secretary of the rump-Convention People’s Party (r-CPP) to the leaders of Ghana’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) warning the latter to cease, forthwith, from using the slogan “Ghana Must Work Again!” – (See “Don’t Use Our Slogan – CPP Warns NPP” Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/1/15). My gut reaction was to say to myself: “If this Nii Armah Akomfrah guy is not of Akan ethnic descent, then maybe it is about time he also handed back the name ‘Akomfrah’ – the bona fide state or warrior’s sword among the Akan people.” In other words, the rump-CPP General-Secretary’s very surname may have been plagiarized; and Nii Armah had better watch out, because he could be sued on grounds of criminal impersonation at the Supreme Court of Ghana.

The rump-CPP operatives are calling on the operatives of Ghana’s main opposition party to desist, henceforth, from using the slogan “Ghana Must Work Again” because the latter electioneering slogan was the title of the manifesto of the rump-CPP during the 2012 campaign season. So much for nonsense, were the dear reader to ask me. The fact of the matter is that the word “Convention,” the most important word in the name Convention People’s Party, was shamelessly plagiarized by Mr. Kwame Nkrumah in 1949 when, as General-Secretary, Nkrumah split with the Danquah- and Paa Willie Ofori-Atta-coined United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC). And I have often wondered what the political destiny of a recklessly opportunistic Mr. Nkrumah would have become, if these two astute lawyers and consanguineous ideological associates had sued the Show Boy and effectively prevented him from using the same.

Very likely, the relatively better established leaders of the UGCC had grossly and, in retrospect, woefully underestimated the much younger and rambunctious Mr. Nkrumah. And, of course, such gross and complacent miscalculation would seal their doom. This is not the very first time that an executive operative of the rump-Convention People’s Party has threatened to sue a political and/or an ideological opponent. Some three or four years ago, when Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, forced out of the rump-Convention People’s Party by Ms. Samia Yaba Nkrumah, a daughter of Ghana’s deposed late dictator by his Egyptian-born trophy wife, formed the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), the very woman who had run Dr. Nduom out of the rump-CPP threatened to go to court in order to prevent the leader-proprietor of the Progressive People’s Party from using the words “People’s Party.” Back then, as now also, I promptly pointed out the comical irony to the late dictator’s daughter. See how history repeats itself?!

Well, the slogan being disputed by Nii Armah Akomfrah is actually not “Ghana Must Work Again!” but rather “America Must Work Again!” For it is almost certain that the slogan was first used in recent years by a mainstream / white-American politician. Needless to say, Ghanaians are quite notorious for copycatting Americans, right from Kwame Nkrumah’s use of the futuristic geopolitical label of the “United States of Africa.” And later, when he became Moscow’s best behaved “Nigger,” Nkrumah resorted to the use of the label “Union of African States.” There might even have been “Socialist” somewhere in the mix initially. Now, let’s talk about political creativity and originality. You see, Nii Armah Akomfrah would be in a far better position with his threatened litigation suit, if the rump-CPP General-Secretary had first attempted to find out precisely when was the very first time that any Ghanaian politician used the slogan “Ghana Must Work Again!”

In the age of Google, such cursory research ought not to have been that yeomanly to conduct. Very likely, here too, Google would have bluntly told Mr. Akomfrah and his gang of desperate Nkrumacratic political associates that the slogan was first used on the Ghanaian political terrain by a Danquah-Busia-Dombo scion.