Dr. David Percy, a leading member of the Socialist forum of Ghana and the National Reform Party, has decried Ghana’s 60th Independence Anniversary celebration speech delivered by H. E President Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo-Addo as a distortion of portions of the Ghanaian history especially those that bother on the role of Ghana’s first president, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, and his colleagues in the UGCC, popular known and called the big six.
Dr. Percy was speaking with show host Akyena Brantuo on Ahotor FM’s 360 politics on Friday 10th March, 2017.
Dr Percy concedes that although independence struggling in Ghana started long before Nkrumah came to the then gold coast, adding that there were resistance at every point right down from slavery, to the aborigines right protection society among others yet it was Dr Nkrumah who brought the ordinary people into the struggle and that was the real trigger for the independence.
In his words, the UGCC, the political movement that invited Dr Nkrumah to be its general secretary was at best a ‘gentleman’s club’ only interested in themselves than the Ghanaian project.
Dr David Percy holds that it was the Works of the Convention’s People Party (CPP) and the works of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah that ultimately harvested Ghana’s independence.
Although he admits that J. B Danquah made research on the roots of the Gold ‘Coasters’, tracing them from the Ancient Ghana Empire and bringing up the name Ghana, he asserts that that alone was not the key reason for Ghana’s independence.
It can be noted that the president’s 60th anniversary speech has come up for some serious criticisms from some loyalists of the CPP and some socialist organization groups.
The presidential inaugural speech of the 60th anniversary stated that ‘after the formation of the UGCC, the leaders decided they needed a full time person to run the party’s affairs; they sent for the dynamic Kwame Nkrumah, and he came to join them in December 1947.
In 1949, on 12th June, Kwame Nkrumah broke away from the UGCC and formed his own party, the Convention People’s Party. Even as he broke away, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah remembered from whence he came and retained the word ‘convention’ in the name of his new party, the CPP.
Eventually independence came and Ghana, under the leadership of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, became the first sub-Saharan country to gain its freedom on March 6 1957.’ The president asserted in the anniversary speech.
Daniel Koranteng Kwagyiri | Ahotoronline.com | Ghana.
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