On the other hand, one can squarely blame Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa for either being a congenital liar or a historiographical ignoramus who adamantly refuses to read up where it matters most. And on the latter score, of course, the allusion is to the verifiable history of Ghana’s liberation struggle.
I wasn’t, however, in anyway surprised when the deputy Information minister, apparently miffed by the very apt decision of the top-echelon membership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to stay away from the largely Nkrumaist independence-day festivities, decided that the best riposte to such delightful rebuff was, somehow, to mischievously massage the glaring facts of history and hope that only textbook-bereft secondary and elementary school pupils were within earshot.
Well, this is what Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa had as repayment for the gallant spearhead of Ghana’s independence and the men and women who made an Nkrumah premiership a concrete reality: “It is well within their nature, as they did 54 years ago when Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and his colleagues were busily ushering us into independence. They had busily taken a flight to the UK to tell the Queen not to grant us independence and that Ghana was not ready” (See “Ablakwa: NPP Attempted to Sabotage Independence Celebration” MyJoyOnline.com 3/7/11).
I hear this young pathological liar recently got married and returned from a Western-European honeymoon on the eve of the independence festivities. One would have thought that a diehard Nkrumaist like Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa would have spent his honeymoon either in Moscow or Havana. Talk of abject cynicism and downright hypocrisy.
Anyway, if the deputy “misinformation” minister really cares to know, Prof. K. A. Busia’s trip to London on the eve of Ghana’s independence was squarely about the salutary objective of preventing a profligate and incurably extrovert “Show Boy” from turning the erstwhile Gold Coast into the kind of infernal one-party tyranny which Ghana eventually and prophetically became. And until those NDC rascals and Indemnity Clause-protected goons can give the rest of us scions of Danquah, Busia and Dombo any constructive reason to believe that the kind of neo-fascist tyranny nefariously established by Mr. Kwame Nkrumah and his so-called Convention People’s Party (CPP) was the best thing that ever happened to Ghana since the Mankessim inaugural of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), well, folks, we have absolutely no other alternative but to sit out the 6th March festivities for the foreseeable future.
Really, “The independence of Ghana is meaningless, unless it is linked up with the total liberation of modern Ghanaian history from the mendacious clutches of CPP/NDC pseudo-revolutionaries and reprobate revisionists.”
What is amazing in the desultory telling is the fact that those who would have unsuspecting contemporary Ghanaian youths believe that the other five of the legendary “Big Six” actually stood for the indefinite prolongation of British colonial rule, also conveniently fail to tell their audiences precisely why Mr. Kwame Nkrumah would be sponsored back from the British metropolis, where he had been stranded, to assist in the systematic promotion of European imperialism on the African continent.
Then again, how did Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa expect the executive membership of the very party against which President John Evans Atta-Mills just declared a national state-of-siege, in his third “State-of-the-Nation Address,” to show up at the Independence Square, only to be rounded up, handcuffed, incriminated, “Red Alerted” by a symphonic orchestra of state security agents and marched off to Nsawam in a preemptive Election 2012 salvo? These Azorka Boys must be riding high on those 77 missing bags of MV Benjamin coke!
We even learn with relish and to our utter amusement that deliberately planted amidst the spectators at the Independence Square, were agent-provocateurs sporting branded T-shirts bearing the images of Messrs. John Evans Atta-Mills and John Dramani Mahama and the inscription, “Mills-Mahama, The Team You Can Trust.”
And just what does Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa mean by claiming that the NPP had attempted to sabotage Ghana’s 54th independence anniversary celebration with a boycott? Or is the understanding among the NDC constabulary that a docile and diffident NPP membership ought to have sheepishly shown up at the Independence Square, taken front-row seats, only to be roundly carped for laying down the indispensable breastwork for the entire process of our national rebirth? Is this what Tarkwa-Atta means when he talks of “Big Thinking”?
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and author of “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011).
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.