Countries which do not honour their heroes stand to lose a lot; the action providing a disincentive for service to the motherland. Such recognitions are opportunities through which new generations learn about makers of their history and emulate their feats.
We do not intend to go into the merits and demerits of the tenure of the first Prime Minister and President Kwame Nkrumah whose birthday we are commemorating today.
The merits and otherwise are minefields which have fed divisive and inconclusive debates for some time now.
Suffice it to point out that Kwame Nkrumah born in 1909, the exact date being a controversial issue, contributed his quota towards the making of his country’s history, with others taking over from him to continue from where he left off.
It is good that one of the makers of our history has been honoured with a holiday so we can all reflect and especially recount what he and others went through in the independence struggle which eventually led to the lowering of the Union Jack and the raising of the newly independent Ghana.
Kwame Nkrumah could not have achieved the feat alone, as other members of the Big Six played significant part in getting independence from Britain.
The membership of the Big Six, acting in concert, did the magic of getting the British to grant us political autonomy.
Unfortunately the tendency to ignore the others, when the history of our independence is being discussed is very high; political emotions sometimes holding sway in such discourses.
There have been deliberate distortions of the history of our independence to facilitate the creation of a lone fighter without who the feat could not have been achieved.
We do not seek to underestimate the role of Kwame Nkrumah in the independence struggle but we must simply recognize the critical contributions of his colleagues some of who unfortunately fell out with him. Indeed some of them were instrumental as fate would have it in his return home from his studies abroad. The lone man theory, for us, is a distortion of history whose correction would serve our cause better.
Some of such persons died in detention, having being incarcerated under debatable charges which did not inure to national unity.
The polarization, which continues to thwart our development as a nation, is traceable to the early post-independence days, a period which was characterized by victimizations.
There were high-notched deportations of persons, who according to Ghanaian statutes, were citizens and should not have been subjected to such actions anyway.
The foregone notwithstanding, the sense of nationalism which Kwame Nkrumah sought to instill in the country led him to introduce the Ghana Young Pioneers concept, a replica of the Communist Youth Leagues of communist countries.
The State Farms concept as a means of ensuring food security and the Workers Brigade were part of ambitious programmes the first Head of State brought to the country within the brief but chequered tenure that he was at the helm.
The best we can do on a holiday like today is to reflect upon the times of the late Kwame Nkrumah and examine how much politicians at the throttle are doing.