Dr. J.B. Danquah
Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Thursday, February 05, 2015
The Dr. Danquah Final Funeral
Rites Committee leading the commemoration of 50 years of the passing of Dr.
Joseph Boakye Danquah has been asked by the NDC government not to venture the
Nsawam Medium Security Prisons where he died in detention for any ceremony whatsoever.
One of Ghana’s foremost
statesmen, J.B. Danquah as he was affectionately called, died on February 4,
1965 after being detained without trial by the Convention People’s Party (CPP)
government led by Ghana’s first President Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
Request Letter
The committee chaired by Prof.
Mike Aaron Oquaye, a former MP in a letter of January 22 requested from the
government, to enable them embark on what they called “Commemorative visit” to
the prisons but the Ministry of the Interior said the request had been declined
on the basis that the facility was a security zone.
“The matter was referred to
the National Security Council and the Ghana Prisons Service who have both
advised that the prisons are security zones and therefore such requests should not
be acceded to. Your visit to Nsawam Prisons is declined,” Mrs. Adelaide
Anno-Kumi Chief Director said in a letter she signed on behalf of the minister,
Mark Owen Woyongo and copied to the National Security Coordinator and the Director-General
of Ghana Prisons Service.
All Rounds
Dr. Danquah a politician,
lawyer, journalist, poet, philosopher who is referred to by many as a ‘Great
Light’ and ‘the flower of West African scholarship’ died at 6:30 am on February
4, 1965 in a Condemned Cell No. 9 at Nsawam.
He was first detained under
the Preventive Detention Act on October 3, 1961 and released on June 22,
1962. On 8 January 1964, Dr. Danquah was
again arrested, detained and died, having suffered a heart attack.
According to Extract from the
Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Ghana Prisons, 1967-1968, “The life of
Dr. J. B. Danquah in the cells was regimented in the same manner as that of a
condemned prisoner awaiting execution … his cell was subject to frequent rigid
searches”.
He has been described by many
historians as an indomitable fighter in the cause of human freedom, a patriot
whose burning desire throughout his life was to secure independence for the
Gold Coast, for which he suggested the name Ghana.
Release Plea
Dr. Danquah’s petition for
release from detention, which eventually reached the desk of President Kwame
Nkrumah reads, among other things, “Dear Dr. Nkrumah, I am tired of being in
prison on prevention detention with no opportunity to make original or any
contribution to the progress and development of the country, and I am therefore
respectfully writing to beg, and appeal to you, to make an order for my release
and return home …. I am here required to sleep or keep lying down on the
blankets and a small pillow for the whole 24 hours of the day and night except
for a short period of about five minutes
in the morning to empty and wash out my latrine pan … my health being
undermined and my life endangered by
various diseases without being allowed to be taken to the Prison Hospital for
continuous observation and treatment..”
Dr. Danquah’s petition fell on
a deaf ear. He died at the age of 69, after a most remarkable, busy, selfless
and noble life.
His Struggle
He was a central figure in the
nationalist movement in the Gold Coast and a leading spokesman of the Gold
Coast intelligentsia for more than three decades.
He was closely involved in the
main trends of colonial politics in the Gold Coast from the 1930s to the 1950s: the demand for
constitutional reform and agitation for self-government, the Gold Coast youth
movements which provided, as the renowned political scientist, David Apter, has
put it, ‘a basis for more serious political organization along nationalist
lines after World War II’, the
establishment and leadership of the
first political party in Ghana, the
United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), which put self-government prominently
on the political agenda, and the fixing of 6th March as Ghana’s independence Day, in commemoration of
the Bond of 1844 signed on 6th March.”
“The core of his political
ideas was to bring the natural rulers and non-traditional elites together in
the struggle towards achievement of Ghana’s independence,” Apter added.
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