‘Nkrumah Never Dies’
Next Wednesday, February 24, 2016, only four days away, will mark the 50th anniversary of the overthrow of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, first President of the Republic of Ghana.
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It is the first and one of four days in every calendar year when the Osagyefo is celebrated, not by his family or members of the party he founded, the Convention People’s Party (CPP), but by millions of people across the globe who have come to recognise him, decades after his death, as probably the greatest African that ever lived.
The other days on which Dr Nkrumah is remembered worldwide are March 6, the day on which Ghana attained nationhood, in 1957; April 27, the day the Osagyefo died in far away Bucharest, Romania, in 1972, reportedly from skin cancer as a result of several bomb attacks on his person and September 21, the day on which Dr Nkrumah was born in 1909.
Power of Nkrumah
When we were growing up in the early years of independence, especially after Ghana had attained a republican status on July 1, 1960, we all could feel the absolute power Nkrumah wielded, young as we were.
He was certainly the most powerful person in Ghana and nobody openly challenged his authority. This was the period his followers and supporters started singing his praises.
That was also the period this group of people declared that Nkrumah, the Show Boy, would never die.
“Nkrumah never dies” became a popular refrain among CPP adherents, thus turning Osagyefo into some sort of a demigod.
Meanwhile, those on the other side of the political divide who did not in any way support Nkrumah, especially religious leaders and members of the opposition, thought it was blasphemous to say that Nkrumah would never die.
Many critics of Nkrumah capitalised on this issue and painted him as somebody who did not believe in God and therefore did not have the fear of God in him.
Nkrumah’s overthrow
It, therefore, came as no surprise when the first announcement made by then Colonel E. K. Kotoka of the Second Infantry Brigade, telling the nation about the overthrow of Nkrumah on February 24, 1966, said the president had been dismissed from office “and the myth surrounding him had been broken.”
In a message of congratulations to the National Liberation Council (NLC), signed by Nii Okai Pesemaku III, Gbese Mantse, and reported in the Daily Graphic of Monday, March 7, 1966, the chiefs and people of the Gbese Traditional Area in Accra extended to the NLC most hearty congratulations and felicitations for their “heroic exploit” in successfully toppling Kwame Nkrumah.
It said, “The fall of Kwame Nkrumah is more spectacular than that of Satan, a most vivid warning and an appreciable lesson to all who pursue the mirage of political kingdom and its volatile treasures.”
It is not surprising that there were wild jubilations throughout the country by a section of the populace that never supported Nkrumah. In cities, towns and villages, there were processions to herald the overthrow of the president who had appeared invincible right from the time he took over the mantle of leadership of Ghana, as leader of Government Business in 1952.
A powerful young pioneer
Now the empire he had built was crumbling. His statue at Circle was brought down, destroyed and carried to the museum. The Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute in Winneba, responsible for the training of future Nkrumaists, was closed down, while the Young Pioneer Moment was banned, much to the joy of many parents who claimed their own children were set up against them.
There was drama at my school (Konongo / Odumasi Secondary School in Ashanti) where a sixth form had been opened in 1965 and some of us were preparing for the “A” Levels scheduled for May / June 1967 as pioneers.
The most powerful person in the school before the coup that toppled Nkrumah was not the headmaster, Mr Ofori Addo, who was feared all the same by the students, but Kofi Owusu, a form four student, whose fees were paid directly from the CPP headquarters in Accra.
Even though this student was not violent and also never displayed any naked power, he was worshipped by everybody, including the headmaster. He was seen as Nkrumah’s boy and was believed to have direct access to the Osagyefo.
The coup, however, brought Kofi Owusu down to earth. He became ordinary and tried to lead a normal life as he received bashings from seniors on whose toes he had stepped.
Kofi Owusu was in the news again during the abortive coup of April 17, 1967 led by Lt Samuel Benjamin Arthur and Lieutenant Moses Yeboah, both of whom later faced the firing squad for the role they played in the attempted coup in which Lt Gen. E. K. Kotoka, the brain behind the February 24, 1966 coup, lost his life.
At the time of the abortive coup of April 1967, I was in Upper Six and Kofi Owusu was in Form Five. It happened that the final year students at KOSS, i.e those in Form Five and Upper Six, were asked to report earlier to start preparations for their exams.
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On the day we were asked to report, I met Kofi at the Asafo Market Motor Park in Kumasi. It was on April 16, 1967. We boarded the same bus and both of us sat at the back.
Kofi told me he would leave for Accra as soon as we got to school. He decided to leave his box and other things in my room. He left for Accra that evening. By the following afternoon, April 17, after it was announced that the coup had been foiled, Kofi was back at Konongo. He was nervous and he told us if he was not caught, he would quit politics. I did not understand him.
The following morning, April 18, we had visitors from the Security Agencies. They were looking for Kofi. He reported himself to the headmaster’s office and was whisked away to Accra.
Kofi was imprisoned for 25 years but was pardoned after five years. He went into voluntary exile in Britain but surfaced again in Ghana when the People’s National Party (PNP) came to power in 1979. He disappeared again when the PNP was overthrown in 1981 and I have never heard of him since then.
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Now dear readers, it is 50 years since Osagyefo was overthrown in what his admirers and followers believe was a CIA-sponsored coup. It is also almost 44 years since he died.
Rather than being forgotten and all that he did in his life time being thrown into the dustbin of history, it appears that it is now that the man is growing in stature. It is now that posterity is recognising his worth and place in history.
It appears all the efforts made by his opponents since his overthrow and death to dent his image and suppress his achievements have not been able to put the Osagyefo under the carpet.
Many were those who were shocked when BBC listeners the world over voted him as Africa’s Man of the Millennium at the turn of the century. He attained this feat at a time when Nelson Mandela was still alive and was adored by many the world over. Yet the Madiba could only place a distant second.
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In the past two decades or so, the image of the Osagyefo has grown bigger than life. On any occasion of his birthday, death, Ghana’s independence day and his overthrow, the whole world focuses on Dr Nkrumah, especially how he led Ghana into nationhood and used that platform to fight for the total liberation of the African continent.
It was for this reason that the African Union (AU), a couple of years ago, erected a statue of Nkrumah at the entrance of the AU Centre and also instituted an Nkrumah Day.
Love him or hate him, Nkrumah’s place in history is assured. As the years roll by, many more who will read about him and his exploits will continue to see him as a true hero of the African Revolution.
His name lives forever.