It’ll be wholly appropriate to call JB Danquah the founder of University of Ghana – Akufo-Addo

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has stated that describing Joseph Boakye (JB) Danquah as the founder of the University of Ghana will be ideal.

Mr Akufo-Addo stated that renaming the University of Ghana after Dr JB Danquah would not be out of place, and expressed hope that it might happen one day.

On Saturday, August 12, President Akufo-Addo declared at the University of Ghana's 75th Anniversary Thanksgiving Service, "For me, the most poignant of those memories is the inestimable work Dr JB Dankqua did to mobilize the Ghanaian people to insist on the building of this university."

"It will be entirely appropriate and not at all improbable to refer to Joseph Boakye Danquah as the university's founder." A reality that should be clearly remembered by all of us who have been and are benefactors of his work on the 75th anniversary of its inception.

"Indeed, in many other jurisdictions where politics is less heated and more attached to historical record, it would not have been out of place to name this university after him." Who knows, it might happen one day," he continued.

Joseph Boakye Danquah was a Ghanaian politician, academic, lawyer, and statesman who died on February 4, 1965. He was a politician in pre- and post-colonial Ghana, formerly known as the Gold Coast, and is credited for giving the country its current name.

Danquah was instrumental in the development of the University of Ghana, Ghana's premier and largest university.

After a British assessment on higher education in West Africa advised that only one university college, to be placed in Nigeria in collaboration with the University of London, would be practicable for the entire continent, he successfully lobbied for its construction in 1948.