LET'S REVISIT NKRUMAH'S POLICIES (PAGE 13, APRIL 5, 2010)

A LEGAL practitioner, Mr Akoto Ampaw, has challenged Ghana’s political leaders to revisit some of the policies and programmes of Ghana’s first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, if the nation is to advance in its development process.
He said no one should conclude that Nkrumah’s policies and programmes were irrelevant in modern times.
Speaking at the Kwame Nkrumah Centenary Campus lectures at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) last Thursday, Mr Akoto Ampaw said, “it is regrettable that experience of Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party (CPP) has been lost on us as a nation.”
He spoke on the topic: “Kwame Nkrumah, the anti-colonialist, strategist and revolutionary intellectual — Lessons for today.”
Mr Akoto Ampaw observed that the 1966 coup was the bane of Ghana’s under development.
The legal practitioner said but for the coup, Ghana would have been an industrialised country today.
He stressed that the slow dismantling of projects undertaken by the CPP government and other negative acts perpetrated by the coup makers, caused the nation dearly.
Mr Akoto Ampaw, who is an Nkrumaist, said Dr Nkrumah lived far ahead of the time that was why the rest of Africa looked up to him for hope.
He said even though the 1966 coup was useless, it was not unexpected because of the developments of the time.
Mr Akoto Ampaw explained that there were several attempts by the neo-colonialists and the imperialists’ forces to take Ghana out of the sphere of world politics due to Nkrumah’s growing influence on African politics.
A lecturer at the University of Ghana, Dr Adam Gamel Nasser, who also delivered a paper at the ceremony, said it was a national disgrace that most of Nkrumah’s projects were left to waste.
Speaking on the topic: “Education, technology and national development: Going to Nkrumah’s vision for the future,” Dr Nasser said the first President believed in technology as a cornerstone for national development that was why he set up the KNUST.
“Nkrumah’s establishment of KNUST was to do away with the African mentality and fear about science and technology, and today his vision has come true,” he said.
Dr Nasser stressed the need for the nation to abandon the concept of development partners because “our so-called development partners would not want us to reach the level they are now.”
He said the nation could do better in its development process if it concentrated on indigenous technology.
The Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr Kofi Opoku-Manu, in a brief statement, said Dr Nkrumah’s vision for education in Ghana immediately after independence was part of the overall comprehensive plan to bring about justice, economic self-reliance and national cohesion.
He said it was important that Ghanaians continued to allow the ideas that impregnated the life of the fist President to reflect in all national activities.
The Chairman of the Kwame Nkrumah Centenary Planning Committee, Prof. Akilagpa Sawyerr, was glad that the African Union had agreed to honour Dr Nkrumah by joining the Government of Ghana to organise the final segment of the centenary celebrations.
The Vice Chancellor of KNUST, Prof. K.K. Adarkwa, chaired the lecture.