For Napo’s 75% Ashanti votes…

To an Akan speaking Ghanaian, the phrase, “Mo Kwame Nkrumah no”, would betray a heart that goes into violent overdrives at the mention of that name. 

The attack itself was totally unprovoked: nothing anybody had said this year, this month or last Tuesday, at his, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh’s, unveiling as running mate in Kumasi, had brought Kwame Nkrumah into the conversation.

I am an unrepentant Kwame Nkrumah ideologue — and I am not ashamed to use that word on myself — though I don’t make excuses for his creation of a one-party state in Ghana and making himself President-for-life, whose word could only be challenged on pain of PDA.  

Yet even if we multiply all his known human frailties and heap on them all the unknown sins disingenuously manufactured and magnified by his detractors, there has been no President like Kwame Nkrumah in the whole of Africa since 1957.  

To compare Nkrumah’s monumental achievements with those of any other Ghanaian or African President, dead or alive, would be comparing apples and unripe mangoes.

For the first International Trade Fair that was postponed after Nkrumah’s overthrow in 1966, the number of Ghanaian companies that had bought stands to exhibit made-in-Ghana goods were in excess of 230.

Within six years of Nkrumah’s rule, Ghana was manufacturing glass (!), canning corned beef and assembling radio and TV sets — a la Sanyo and Akasanoma. In the 1960s!

Rather than import them as finished goods, Nkrumah brought down the knock-down parts of the fans, TVs and radios to be assembled in Ghana. For him, it was a Research and Development (R&D) mechanism.

Note: The Chinese were to stumble upon this economic philosophy 37 years later, in the early 1980s, under Deng Xiaoping. Ghana was manufacturing yacht boats in the first half of the 1960s.

As far back as that time, the man had plans for cars made in Ghana. The dream materialised in the Acheampong government, giving birth to the Boafo and Adom vehicles which were active on our roads, transporting goods and human passengers.  This was 30-plus years before the present day China-made tricycles which, in 2024, have become technological miracles in Ghana.

If the NPP running mate did not know much about Nkrumah, he had only to ask President Akufo Addo, Otumfuo the Asantehene or even Dr Bawumia. A day after Napo’s “fiery” speech, a radio listener called in from the Western Region, drawing Ghanaians’ attention to the consequences of hate-speech.

What if Nzemas, in particular, or people from the Western Region, generally, decided, en-bloc, to vote against any candidate from Ashanti, in reaction to this denigrating reference to Nkrumah! 

Till today, NPP still suffers the consequences of a so-called “truth” uttered by one of its fathers, Victor Owusu, in Parliament in 1979 against people from Volta Region. That scar is still raw on the skin of Voltarians.

Under PNDC rule, a number of prominent Fantes decided that enough was enough; that the military government of Rawlings was targeting Fantes. A club was formed and meetings started.

The objective was to use the platform to whip up Fante nationalism. Mercifully, the idea fizzled out after their fourth or so meeting? Why? Some of them felt that the move was untypical of Fantes.

Would Napo have dared to utter this “truth” if he thought Western (or Nzema) votes made any difference in the election of a President in Ghana? He couldn’t care whose ox got gored. All he cared about was 75 per cent Ashanti votes.

I am not a politician, so I really do not lose sleep over who becomes President, knowing that they are all of the same stock, without exception – totally bereft of ideas beyond what IMF and World Bank prescribe.

But I  am an Nkrumahist, and on behalf of Nkrumahists, I have one advice for Napo: “Se inyim ekitsiw-ekitsiwa a, m’emmfa nnkitsiw nkantonsoe ho”.

This proverb has its origins in the practice in Ghanaian villages in days of yore, where everybody was wont to wipe their backside with a corn cob after moving their bowels in the bush or the “wheetom” public toilet.

Some people became more daring, going beyond the corn cob to try other available materials such as tree leaves.  The practice ended the day someone dared to use the “leaves” of the cactus plant. He had not heeded calls to be on the lookout for its spikes.

Of course, Napo can afford to continue speaking like this because “Ghanaians have short memory”; that we are ever forgiving, driven by our “Fama Nyame” philosophy. With this at the back of their minds, politicians can say anything to any ethnic group and still win an election if a particular tribe votes 75 per cent en bloc.

You’ve mastered the art of hurling insults? Not at Kwame Nkrumah. The Akan of Ghana have a question, “Wonoa no den na wammben?” - to wit, how was it boiled that it came out uncooked?