By Dominic Odipo

Was Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana, as great an African leader as his supporters have often claimed?

In the article carried in this column two weeks ago, I suggested that he was not, but did not elaborate. For the benefit of all those who saw the article and, in particular, those who forcefully opposed its references to Nkrumah, here is the elaboration.

From the onset, it is important to try and capture just what sort of leader Nkrumah was. In very few words, Nkrumah was conceited, vain, dictatorial and an ill-disguised enemy of all the civil liberties of the people of Ghana.

He was a megalomaniac who, calling himself the “Redeemer”, sought to place himself next to Jesus Christ, at least in the minds of the Ghanaian people. He sought the union of all independent African states, but only on one condition: That he would become the President of Africa — no one else.

Nkrumah and Dr Julius Nyerere, the first President of Tanzania, never got along well.

Why? Because Nyerere was pushing for an East African Federation which Nkrumah could not stomach because it threatened his grand dream of creating an African Union, with himself as the president of the whole continent.

In his blind and relentless pursuit of supreme continental power, Nkrumah could not see that continental unity and such organisations as the East African Federation were not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Independent Africa’s first Preventive Detention Act was passed and promulgated by none other than Kwame Nkrumah.

In 1958, hardly two years after Ghana became independent, Nkrumah engineered the promulgation of this Act, one of the darkest blots on the history of the entire African continent.

Under this Act, Nkrumah could detain anyone he suspected of opposing him or his policies without recourse to any due process of law in the country’s judicial system.

This Act was later copied and replicated by numerous independent African states, including Kenya, which brought its own version of that law into force in 1966.

By the end of 1961, it had become a criminal offence for any Ghanaian to show any disrespect to either the person or dignity of Nkrumah himself. And the final judge of such disrespect was Nkrumah, “The Redeemer.”

In 1964, Nkrumah pushed through a new constitutional amendment making his party, the Convention People’s Party (CPP), the only legal party in Ghana and himself president for life of both the party and country.

That amendment effectively turned Ghana into a de facto dictatorship and Nkrumah himself into a dictator for life.

Throughout his political life, Nkrumah appears to have been guided not by moral or political principle, but by the necessities of his personal or political survival.

In January 1950, Nkrumah organised a resistance campaign against the British, which included civil disobedience, non-co-operation, boycotts and strikes. But in 1955, after he had become prime minister, Nkrumah introduced the Trade Unions Act, which made all strikes in Ghana illegal.

He bluntly told the trade unions that their days as advocates for the safety and just remuneration of workers were over.

10 per cent commission

All powers of advocacy and action for the workers of Ghana were to revert to the Osagyefor — The Redeemer — himself.

Was Nkrumah personally corrupt? To most of his supporters or disciples, the answer seems to be no. But what were the facts?

Under him Government ministers routinely demanded a 10 per cent commission before they could sign off on major Government contracts.

Did Nkrumah himself know about these backhand commissions, or benefit directly from them? Let us give him the benefit of doubt.

Yet, on at least two occasions, Nkrumah himself personally awarded major international multi-million dollar contracts without reference to the relevant ministers.

At least two senior members of his Cabinet later claimed that Nkrumah had received enormous amounts of American dollars as kickbacks from these contracts, most of which ended up in the President’s Contingency Fund, which was not subject to any parliamentary scrutiny.

Howling monster

In his memoirs, former CPP secretary general, Tawia Adamanafyo wrote that, under Nkrumah, corruption in Ghana had become “a howling monster threatening to wreck the whole nation.”

By the time Nkrumah was deposed through a military coup in February 1966, Ghana was on its knees, its national coffers virtually empty. Scores of hospitals and clinics around the country were operating without medicine because, fearing immediate preventive detention, no senior officer could dare tell Nkrumah what the real situation on the ground was.

If Nkrumah was a great man, as his disciples claim, then Julius Nyerere and Nelson Mandela were much greater men. Lets keep these matters in perspective.

—The writer is a lecturer and consultant in Nairobi.

dominicodipo@yahoo.co.uk