Kludze queries Ghana’s history

Prof. Kludze is a retired Supreme Court judge in Ghana


By William Yaw Owusu

Thursday February 25, 2010
Professor A.K. Paaku Kludze, a retired Supreme Court judge says the high level of intellectual dishonesty associated with Ghana’s history must be not be allowed to persist or else the country may soon lose track of her rich history.

“There is plenty of intellectual dishonesty in this country and this has gone on for far too long. Can you imagine some intellectuals and politicians heaping praises on one man as the only founder of this modern Ghana when in actual fact it is far from the truth? he asked

Prof. Kludze who is currently the Director of the Judicial Service’s Career Magistrates’ Programme was speaking at the opening of the 43rd J.B. Danquah Memorial Lectures at the British Council Hall in Accra on Monday evening.

The three-day lecture, themed “Institutional responses to the challenges of nationhood and democratic governance in Ghana” is being organized by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS).

GAAS has since 1959 gathered together the highest level of intellectuals, experts, and professionals in the country to constitute a think tank in the area of arts and sciences with the view to offering sound advice for national development.

Prof. Kludze who spoke on the topic ‘Danquah and the movement for independence’ noted that no matter what claims exist regarding the founding of the state of Ghana, “the history of the movement for Ghana’s independence cannot be written without the mention of Dr. JB Danquah. This is not a matter which should be obfuscated by political chicanery and ignorant effusions.”

He said objective historians might someday “establish whether Dr. Danquah was one of the founders of the modern state of Ghana.”

The Professor said at the time of Dr. Danquah’s birth at the turn of the 19th century there had been what he called “perceivable and even loud demands for an end to colonial rule in the Gold Coast” adding “I would not therefore pretend that Dr. Danquah was the founder of modern Ghana. The foundations for independence were laid before Dr. Danquah was born and certainly before 1909.”

He said for instance the Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society (ARPS) had been galvanizing public opinion within the constraining limitations of the colonial setting to demand greater recognition of the rights of the native population while the West Africa Conference was also formed in 1917 to agitate for self rule from the colonialist.

“Long before Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the Congress had demanded that self government should be implemented to enable people of African descent to participate in the government of their own country. In the face of these historical facts I cannot say that Dr. Danquah is the founder of this nation. Indeed, Dr. Danquah never made such a claim.”

He said Dr. Danquah’s contribution towards building modern Ghana cuts across all fields “he believed and spoke for farmers at the time that was why he was given the title ‘Akuafo Kanea’ – ‘The lamp of the farmers.”

He said the name Ghana was given to the people of Gold Coast after independence due to “Dr. Danquah’s tireless and extensive research at the British Museum in London. With all these glaring facts, some intellectuals and politicians still hold that Dr. Nkrumah is the only founder of modern Ghana.”

He said the claims by some that Dr. Danquah led United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) out of which the Convention People’s Party (CPP) broke away because he did not want the people of the Gold Coast to attain self rule could not be true because at the launch of the UGCC in Saltpond in 1947, Dr. Danquah had strongly pushed for self independence.

Prof. Kludze said the UGCC leadership committed what he calls ‘tactical errors’ by assuming that it was the only political force that could lead Ghana to attain independence and this was where the charisma of Dr. Nkrumah and his CPP outsmarted them to lead Ghana to the Promise Land.

“The UGCC should have gone along with the CPP in asking for independence. It was naïve for the UGCC to think that it was the only group that could lead the people of the Gold Coast to attain independence. We have to give Dr. Nkrumah some credit because if he had taken any false step things could have gone wrong”.

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