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Veteran politician and aspiring National Chairman for the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Professor Edmund Delle has blamed Britain, Ghana’s last colonial master, for the high illiteracy rate in the northern part of the country.

According him, the British government, after colonizing Ghana [then Gold Coast] in 1821, deliberately under educated the people of the north and did not allow them to mingle with people in the south. He opined that the move was a policy the British government implemented in its colonies including Nigeria.

Prof. Delle made the claims on Time with the Legends segment on the Citi Breakfast Show.

Professor Delle explained that, during moves to elevate Ghana into an independent state, the Northern People’s Party led by Chief S.D. Dombo [Upper West Region], was formed to fight for the interest of the people in the area.

He said, Chief Dombo and his team argued that the North, would be disadvantaged if added to Ghana, thus demanded to be made a federal state.

“Chief Dombo [and his team] understood the movement of our political scene and their idea was…if they joined Ghana as a group to have independence, those of us who were from the North were going to suffer because if you read the history, we were British protectorate and we felt that since we were not as developed as the south if we were merged with the Southern sector which was very advanced, it would have affected us,” he stated.

According to professor Delle, “it was not even possible for northerners to come to the south; that is what people don’t know.”

“The British never allowed us to come to the south. You can’t even count more than three people who came for education there. Only a few examples like Dr. Andani and a few of them came to Achimota because we were relegated to the north because they didn’t want us to mix up with the people in the south. They wanted to keep the northern territories from the colonies just for us to become the hewers and drawers of water. That was their intention. To under educate the people of the north,” Prof. Delle added.

The veteran politician said “It was only the CPP [led by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah] that came to change things in the north otherwise I would have been a farmer by now.”

Factional politics

Prof. Delle also revealed that factional politics was very pervasive before and during independence, saying Ghana’s first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah tried to reverse the trend by uniting the country.

“That is why the Nkrumah government tried to convince them [people of the North] that we have a small country, Ghana, so if we divide ourselves to little pieces how are we going to survive and I’m so happy that his idea prevailed.”

He said Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was able to convince the northerners and told them that “we should make sure that we have a unitary form of government.”

“Again he made it clear to us that if we want to start independence with this small groupings and making parties regionally and according to religion, so regionally and religion these are the things Nkrumah succeeded in breaking and making a law which is hailed in Africa. But you cannot make a party in using regions, tribes or religion and I think these are one of the things that helped can and it was eliminated.”

About Prof. Delle

Prof. Edmund Delle is a professor of dermatology at the University for Development Studies. He served as the chairman of the CPP from 2003 to 2007.

He is staging a come back in a bid to be elected as the chairman of the party for the second time.

He told Citi Breakfast Show host, Bernard Koku Avle that he decided to come back for the position because members of the party had approached him with the offer.