Paa Grant — Was he the founder of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC)?

Caught pants down ‘assaulting the pillars of democracy’!

Colin Essamuah Opinion Apr - 02 - 2016 , 15:23

So many things, all important and significant in their own ways, have filled our ears and eyes since I last wrote, the interval being this year’s Easter holidays and festivities, climaxing at the Kwahu Meet- me-there holidaying and paragliding experience which is now gradually attaining the status of a devoted cult. Very soon, it will replace Christmas and our weekend funeral trips as the biggest social event of the year.

What this means is a direct reflection on how we spend our discretionary monies, the quantum of monies available to be so spent, and other associated trickling-down effects of a burgeoning and changing economy.

So what happened in the two-week interim? A lot. But I will devote my comments to the three which caught my attention and concentrate a bit on the main dish still seizing our airwaves as I write early this week.

This is simply because, unlike the others, these three and their ramifications would outlast the others in significance as we all get ready for the general election later this year.

They are first, the sudden, unexpected demise of Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, a formidable guru of the opposition New Patriotic Party whose funeral awaits. Second, the interview granted by another NPP guru and firebrand, Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe, and lastly, the strange and curious tale of the importation by the same NPP of three ex-policemen from South Africa to train the bodyguard of the party’s flag bearer who himself chalked up 72 years last Tuesday. There is actually a link among all these events.

Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey

I have written about Jake who I knew reasonably well in this column before, but on this occasion, all I can say is, may he rest in peace as the family gets ready to lay him to rest. He has done his bit for his party and nation. I note, however, that nothing much has been said since his death about his work for the Popular Front Party of Victor Owusu in the time of President Limann in our Third Republic in 1979, which is a pity.

The wide-ranging interview granted to an Accra TV station by Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe as usual contained enough lessons for the politically-aware in this season of suspensions and dismissals in the NPP, Nyaho himself having been suspended. Characteristically, he has been dismissed by party insiders as someone doing the bidding of his nephew, Ibrahim Mahama, brother to President John Mahama, and therefore not worth listening to.

This is strange and weird because another guru of the same party, listened to with reverence by the same insiders is Yaw Osafo-Maafo, whose blood brother is Adjei-Marfo who held ministerial level positions in both the PNDC and the NDC. Why is this discrimination against the political creditworthiness of Nyaho?

It is this sort of sorry thinking which has erased from party history and celebrations the name of the founder of the UP tradition, George Paa Grant. He was accused in his time of doing the bidding of his fellow Nzema, later President Nkrumah. Of course, those who pushed this successful agenda were completely unaware that Paa Grant was a foundation member of the Aborigines Rights Protection Society, and of other political societies in the period, including the Nzema Literary Society, whose secretary at one time was Mr Kwame Nkrumah before he left the Gold Coast for America in 1935.

On my assertion that he founded the UGCC and not Dr Danquah whose name features in the current revisionist account of the NPP, I will just refer those interested to the paper delivered to the Coussey Constitutional Commission of 1950 by Dr Danquah himself. I remember clearly when I made the point of honouring Grant properly at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the UGCC in August, 1997, this very paper took me on for not paying the requisite attention to President Nkrumah, when my entire contribution was not about Nkrumah, but the foundations of the UGCC. This goes to show how our predilections succeed in disregarding other valuable pieces of information, robbing us all of a fuller view of what has happened.

Invitation of three south Africans

Exactly the same trajectory is being pursued by the defenders of the bizarre invitation of the three South Africans. It is clear to me that the concentration on rightness or wrongness of legal processes by the government is being done deliberately to preclude us from asking the fundamental question why? Why implies so many other things far more important than the question of whether the government has acted properly in reaction to this amazing and mind-boggling story.

Those who are interested in the legal processes involved may do well to revisit Ex parte Salifa, in which the Attorney-General at the time in 1968, Victor Owusu, succeeded before Justice VCRAC Crabbe, then at the Accra High Court, in locking up the 17-year-old Salifa, son of a wanted security operative then in Guinea with ousted President Nkrumah. You would have the distinct feeling that the eloquent and ingenious Victor Owusu would have succeeded in locking up everybody named in the comprehensive statement of the Interior Minister, Mr Prosper Bani.

But that still is a needless deflection of the most important question. Why should a democratic leader whose success rests on interaction with the voting masses see the need for crowd control? Why did Nana Akomea say on radio the day the story broke he was unaware of the story even though he is the spokesman of the flag bearer whose security was being planned? Does that imply factions within factions in the innermost circles of the NPP, who have then managed to drag the entire party to defend something most of the relevant people are not privy to? How were the ex-cops to be paid then?

The answers to these fundamental questions are more relevant to our democracy than the rectitude of the resultant processes. In any case, one cannot decide for the injured party, this time the government, how it should respond to the initial infraction of the law. I note no one is saying the deportation is unlawful. In addition how do we resolve the question of Captain Koda, who has released a statement touting his innocence? Is the NPP as a party for or against the AFRC of Rawlings of 1979? Both the periods 1979 and 1981-1993 can be successfully argued as the long-drawn out withdrawal from government of the military in our affairs as a country. Both are therefore the reaction to the Acheampong coup of 1972 which overthrew Prime Minister Busia. We live in interesting times when people are planning to assault democracy, and in the words of Professor Kofi Awoonor, using democracy to destroy democracy.