Not Sekou's Call

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
March 19, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

Ordinarily, I would not be writing about the question of whether Dr. Onsy Nathanial Kwame Nkrumah was the biological son of Ghana's first postcolonial president, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, or not. For not only is it none of my business, I also believe that there are far more significant and pressing problems facing our country that require sedulous attention and prompt solutions than the purely anecdotal question of the number of children of Ghana's first president. My interest was, however, piqued by the news item captioned "Sekou Nkrumah Wants Onsy's Claims Interrogated," which appeared in the March 19, 2015 edition of Ghanaweb.com and sourced to Adomonline.com. We further learn that the story actually originated from Ghana's leading government-owned newspaper The Daily Graphic.

The original source of the story is alleged to have described the Egyptian-mothered Dr. Onsy Nkrumah as having caustically impugned the wisdom of President John Dramani Mahama's recent IMF bailout pact and the dire implications that the stipulated economic reforms that come with the deal have for the country. But evidently what had provoked the ire of Mr. Sekou Nkrumah, the third son of Ghana's deposed and late dictator, was the fact that the Graphic reporter had also described Dr. Onsy Nkrumah as "a son of President Nkrumah." Sekou Nkrumah claims to have met his alleged half-brother a couple of times but can only accept Onsy as "a friend and not a brother," because no family member of Ghana's late former leader has categorically informed the son of Mrs. Fathia Nkrumah that Onsy is a biological member of the Nkrumah family.

The former Atta-Mills youth leader would therefore have Dr. Onsy Nkrumah undergo a DNA-Test before the latter could legitimately presume to genetically affiliate himself with the elder Mr. Kwame Nkrumah. This is rather farcically curious because the Head of President Nkrumah's Nkroful Clan, Adwobia Kpanyinli, is widely reported to have accepted Dr. Onsy Nkrumah, who is known to be older than Mrs. Fathia Nkrumah's three children, namely, Gamal, Samia and Sekou, as a bona fide member of the Nvavile Clan, the maternal lineage of President Nkrumah. We also learn that Onsy Nkrumah has generously reciprocated the Nkroful family's gesture by successfully undertaking the renovation of President Nkrumah's ancestral home.

If the foregoing report has validity, and credibility, then it stands to reason that Mr. Sekou Nkrumah has absolutely no right to presume to deny Dr. Onsy Nkrumah his clearly established paternity. In other words, the objective scientificity of DNA testing notwithstanding, as far as Nzema mores or cultural values are concerned, the unreserved acceptance of Dr. Onsy Nathaniel Kwame Nkrumah by Adwobia Kpanyinli, the legitimate Head of the Nkrumah Clan, supersedes Mr. Sekou Nkrumah's call for Dr. Onsy Nkrumah to subject himself to a DNA-Test as the only surefire means of convincing President Ahmed Sekou Toure's godson that the two Egyptian-mothered men are blood relatives and, in fact, half-brothers.

I decided to write this column because late last December and early January this year, Dr. Onsy Nkrumah dispatched to me at least three emails attempting to establish some level of acquaintance and rapport. I never responded to any of them because I did not find any form or level of discourse or correspondence with Onsy to be of any far-reaching benefit. He had apparently read one of my columns which had made a passing reference to the late Pastor Francis Akwasi Amoako, founder of the Church of the Resurrection, and wanted to know how I had gotten to know the putatively assassinated renowned Ghanaian evangelist. Rev. Amoako had been a caustic critic of the Rawlings dictatorship. I found the enquiry to be rather presumptous and facilely mischievous, thus my decision not to respond. And, by the way, I still maintain my decision.

What I finally want to add is that Mr. Sekou Nkrumah has every right to refuse and consanguineal relationship with Dr. Onsy Nkrumah. But he has absolutely no right to dictate how the identity and paternity of anybody claiming to have been fathered by President Nkrumah ought to be established.

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