In a recent interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Dzodze, in the Volta Region, Ms. Samia Nkrumah, a daughter of former President Kwame Nkrumah and newly-elected chairperson of the rump-Convention People�s Party (CPP), reportedly lamented the steadily �dwindling fortunes� of her tautologically named party (See �Samia Disappointed By Low Support For CPP� MyJoyOnline.com 10/3/11).
I have said this before and here again repeat the same: and it is the incontrovertible fact that the CPP has yet to regain even half of the appeal that it had mustered under Mr. Kwame Nkrumah. I have also highlighted the fact that his one-party cult-of-personality is highly unlikely to capture the imagination of an extremely enlightened and cosmopolitan Ghanaian electorate in the global age of the Internet.
The fact that the African Show Boy had no deputy, but a variable three-man presidential council that deputized for him anytime that Mr. Nkrumah left the country for foreign engagements, significantly underscores a very psychologically insecure personality that brooked no possibility for the salutary grooming of a confident and trusted deputy who could readily replace THE SUPREME COMMANDER. This largely explains precisely why since February 24, 1966, the followers of �The Osagyefo� have been having an extremely difficult time in uniting fellow travelers under a single political banner. And despite the expedient and opportunistic election of the Show Boy�s half-Arab daughter as the face of the rump-CPP, there are no signs that the self-centered bickering among those who would be named the avatar of Mr. Kantamanto are ready to subdue their egos in order for a consensual/consensus leader to emerge around whom to rally the splintered claimants to the Nkrumaist legacy.
On a more intimate and personal level, as I have had the opportunity to learn from quite a remarkable number of Nkrumah partisans, the fact that Ms. Nkrumah does not even passably speak any major Ghanaian language, may well be an electoral drawback for an increasingly nationalistic Ghanaian citizenry. It is also true, even as Ms. Nkrumah has herself observed, that her late father had �ushered Ghana into independence with a strong economic foundation.�
On the latter score, however, what is often not adequately emphasized and ought to be repeatedly highlighted, is the fact that the preceding observation is only half of the entire narrative. The historical reality painfully points to the fact that Nkrumah�s vaulting pan-Africanist ambitions dictated capriciously, albeit paradoxically predictably, that the first Ghanaian leader in the postcolonial era would profligately dissipate our limited national resources in short order. On the latter score, we know from Mr. Jonathan (H.) Frimpong-Ansah, deputy-governor of the Bank of Ghana from 1965 to 1968, that by 1961, Ghana�s national treasury was totally bankrupt. It clearly and tragically appears that in all his advanced studies abroad, largely here in the United States, notwithstanding, Mr. Nkrumah had unwisely allowed his flamboyant political rhetoric and personal ambitions to pathetically and unduly dwarf his resource-management skills.
He would end up stampeding his own Finance Minister, Mr. Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, the man who had staunchly held the fort for the �Osagyefo� while the latter was in prison, over �Afro-Gbede�s� indubitably wise counsel and critical carping of the Supreme Commander over the latter�s financial profligacy. To the mainstream of Ghanaian society, however, Afro-Gbede would be accused of grand larceny of the national treasury and shady dealings with the ideological and political opposition.
Anyway, those of us who have a remarkable knowledge of the modern Ghanaian electoral landscape, are well aware of the fact that Ms. Nkrumah�s choice of Dzodze as a venue in which to lament the steadily dwindling fortunes of her party, was grossly misplaced. For it is an open secret that throughout his 15-year tenure, Mr. Nkrumah and his Convention People�s Party never garnered more than a tenth � or 10-percent � of the Volta ballot. Thus it must have come across as nothing short of the utterly comedic for Ms. Nkrumah to have implied that the CPP was in any way, whatsoever, highly regarded by the residents of Antor-Ayeke�s erstwhile Trans-Volta Togoland stronghold.
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