Extorted CPP Property Cannot Be Returned

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 19, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]

I have already responded to this rather bizarre call by the Nkrumacrats to have the Ministry of Information building in Accra returned to the rump-Convention People's Party (CPP), and so I intend to be brief in this response to Mr. Abdul Malik Kweku Baako, editor-publisher of the New Crusading Guide (See "Return Information Ministry Building to CPP - Kweku Baako" MyJoyOnline.com 7/19/14). Ethical principles dictate that a thug is not rewarded with stolen property; a thug is punished with seizure of such ill-gotten wealth.

My initial response was to the infamous dictator's daughter, Ms. Samia Yaba Nkrumah, who had also claimed that the release of the building allegedly housing the headquarters of the original Convention People's Party had been authorized by a judicial panel headed by Justice Annie Jiagge. My response back then, as I vividly recall, was that by the time of its legitimate overthrow by the Kotoka-led National Liberation Council (NLC) junta, on Feb. 24, 1966, the CPP had effectively lost its legitimacy as a political party, being that President Kwame Nkrumah had misused his electoral mandate and parliamentary majority to thoroughly and effectively corrupt and eviscerate the Westminster Constitution upon which was predicated Britain's granting of sovereignty to Ghana.

We shall deal with this aspect of postcolonial Ghanaian history as and when it becomes necessary. At any rate, as I stated earlier on, the Convention People's Party of the pre-1966 era is not in any way similar to the Ms. Nkrumah-led rump-CPP. And so to pretend that the rump-CPP is one and the same as the party that led Ghana to independence is to live in a fool's paradise. Then also, as a one-party state political juggernaut, the CPP coerced all civil and public servants into membership and extorted membership fees/dues from their paychecks or salaries at source, often without the express permission or consent of these political hostages. That was the only way for any government employee to maintain his/her job status and livelihood.

Consequently, any move by the Mahama government to release any public property - for that is what the Information Ministry building is - to the rump-CPP would be flagrantly tantamount to an endorsement of the criminal dictatorship represented by the Nkrumah-led Convention People's Party. It would also pave the way for the children and grandchildren of all public and civil servants coerced into CPP dues-paying membership to sue the government of the day for restitution. And when that happens, a can of worm similar to the raging judgment-debt floodwaters is apt to catastrophically inundate the land.

In sum, it would open the door for members and adherents of the Busia-led Progress Party (PP), and the Limann-led People's National Party (PNP) to also sue for the return of their confiscated properties. Likewise the heirs and/or scions of media institutions proscribed by the Nkrumah-led CPP would also be legitimately authorized to sue the government of the day for loss of both properties and livelihhod. I sincerely don't believe that diehard Nkrumacrats like Mr. Baako and Ms. Nkrumah have seriously pondered the far-reaching and blistering financial and emotional implications of what they want to get the Mahama government into.

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