Sekou Nkrumah, the son of Ghana’s late first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, has stated that his father’s ambition to turn Ghana into a one-party state was the beginning of his downfall.
The political activist and writer stated that regardless of the reason, it was the start of the downfall, something he personally never appreciated.
However, he was quick to point out that it is also appropriate to consider the context in which his late father established the country as a one-party state.
Speaking with Dr. Ren on Rainbow Radio 92.4FM in the United Kingdom via Zoom he said the idea was to unite the country, “but who gave you that mandate to become president for life? This habit was a bit stretched, and I am not comfortable with it”.
Citing the history, he said his father won free elections in 51, 54, and 56, as well as in 1960, which indicates that he started as a democratic leader, and so there was no need for him to have made Ghana a one-party state.
He argued that when this happened, it made some people justify the 1960 coup since they felt the late leader was being oppressive, preventing opposing views, or suppressing others.
He stated that even if the majority of people are on your side and support you, you must allow for competing viewpoints. I believe it was incorrect, yet it was practiced by others at the time.
He said being an autocratic leader does not guarantee success and cited the late Guinean President Sékou Touré as an example of someone who was autocratic but failed his people.
He described his father as having a different personality in the sense that, when you imagine the infrastructure and the vision he had at the time for developing the country, but of course there is that argument that the state-owned factories were not running well, but at least he was good in infrastructure.
Sekou stressed that, although his father meant well for Ghana, he could have still executed his agenda without introducing the one-party state.
He suggested that his father could have adopted the strategy used by the United Kingdom, which allowed their prime ministers to run without a limited term and still have elections and allowed people to contest him.
“In the UK, the prime ministers run as long as they want to. So in Ghana, if Nkrumah felt that he was the only guy to move us forward, he could have; there would be no limit to his term, but at the same time, allow other people to compete and contest against you.
So I don’t buy into the one-party state or the military dictatorship either. When you look at the history of the military dictatorship, it didn’t really serve us well. Acheampong put in a lot of infrastructure and so on, but look at what’s happened to corruption at the end, which even brought this violent June 4 and so forth.”
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
