I am additionally animated to allotment the belvedere today with Kwesi Pratt Junior, a Comrade who has sacrificed the bigger allotment of his activity in chase of amusing amends and who is not abashed to allege up back he must, a affection that is accepting consistently beneath in our Republic, as the canicule go by
SUMMARY OF MY LECTURE TODAY I would like to acquaint aloof three things in my abode today
First, the affair you accept asked me to allege on is self-answered; the answers are aural the question, a bright adumbration that you apprehend me to allege about article else
Second, the acumen why we are quarrelling today about the allegory of the Big Six and the Absolute Architect of the Nation is that, as comrades, we accept banned to apprentice from our leader, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, who did not alone do, but scripted what he did, for posterity
The third and aftermost point I would like to accomplish today is on the Ageism of Ability Assembly and Epistemic Abandon in the apple we animate in today, and what assembly may do about it
THE MYTH OF THE BIG SIX AND THE REAL FOUNDER'S DAY As I accept aloof noted, your affair is self-answering. "The Allegory of the Big Six" agency absolutely that; the big six is a Myth. And the "Real Founder's Day" agency that today is the Absolute Founder's Day, and that, as the announcement is acclimated in the singular, there is alone one Architect and not abounding founders
It is accurate that there were abounding bodies and organisations that contributed to the ability struggle. From Nkrumah; through the Big Six, chiefs, axial abstracts in business and lawyers; to ex-service men, bazaar women and balustrade boys, anniversary arena actual different and important roles in the struggle, and we accept not abandoned them. That is why we absolve them on Ability Day every distinct year
Founder's Day, however, charge be aloof for the African of the 20th Century, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah. Full Stop
This absolutely causeless and backward-looking agitation was instigated by the accepted government as allotment of a angle to advantage the roles of the ancestors of the two best politically able bodies in Ghana today. So, President Akufo-Addo wants Edward Akufo-Addo fabricated a architect of Ghana and Hon. Ken Ofori-Atta wants William Ofori Atta fabricated a architect of Ghana
Whilst it is blue-blooded to honour our parents and uncles and aunties, we must, as leaders, consistently be acquainted about the curve amid the attainable and the private. Clandestine honour should never be affected to transcend into the attainable space, whether it be in the assurance of who the Architect of the nation is, or in architecture a cathedral. This abhorrent alloy of the attainable and the private, area the assets of the nation and the history of the nation are privatized is as bedraggled as it is dangerous
J. B. Danquah's role in the ability attempt is commendable, alike if dimmed by his absorbing accord with the CIA. Any able law apprentice who has apprehend Danquah's submissions in the Re Akoto case knows that he was a absolute acknowledged luminary. These charge to be celebrated. That is why I abutment a Danquah Circle in one of the choiciest genitalia of Accra, Osu. This adapted honour is of a attainable appearance and is a blue-blooded affair to do. What is inappropriate is for politicians, whilst they are in office, to accomplish and whip up a affected abstract of the contributions to civic development of your relatives, about-face this into a huge NATIONAL calendar and advance to amplify their abode in our history
Public honour does not avert clandestine acts of honor. A clandestine Danquah Institute is a actual admirable idea. It is article I will abutment any day. However, advice and mapping the Danquah Institute unto our civic aegis apparatus, is as alarming as it is naïve. In my able life, and over a assertive period, I had the honour of interacting with the best of Ghana's civic aegis apparatus, about on a circadian basis. I learnt abounding things over that time. One affair I learnt was that the best civic aegis chiefs are those who are able to accommodate to the President a accretion of the civic aegis situation, an adumbration of the centralized and alien aegis threats, and recommendations as to how to abode them; alms these to the President in their abrupt and abstruse reality, alike to the ache of the President. They would then, on some issues, seek the amusement of the President and act accordingly. The best of them would admonish the President on the furnishings of his directions, acceptable or bad, and area the President is absolutely off, nudge him afterpiece to reason. The point I am disturbing to accomplish is this: if we booty the Minister for Civic Aegis out of the equation, the Danquah Institute Civic Aegis we accept now cannot defended the nation, abnormally as we go into what is activity to be the best actively contested Presidential and Parliamentary acclamation in a little over 2 years
To achieve on this aboriginal point about the Allegory of the Big Six and the Absolute Founder's Day, let me say article about the Big Six. There was no Big Six. The Six never saw themselves as a Unit and they did not act as a Unit. Indeed, back the temperature became hot, the associates of the Big Six generally angry adjoin one addition in a appearance that alone any affairs for unitary, circumscribed activity of the array that could actualize a Big Six
A abysmal account of the Watson Commission Report reveals that the added bristles abhorrent Nkrumah for the contest arch up to their arrest and banned of the plan of activity he developed, circulated, activated, and monitored for the actual accomplishment of freedom for Ghana. The catechism I ask is this: how can you apprehend to be accustomed for the ability of Ghana in 1957 back you did not appetite that ability to appear at that time? Indeed, any analytical clairvoyant of our history will agenda that the appellation "The Big Six" was a aftereffect of the abortion of British Intelligence in Ghana of the time, which we now know, was horrendously weak. All they did was to arrest the leaders of the UGCC affair at the time, a aftereffect of absolutely apathetic intelligence acquisition and processing. The abstraction of "The Big Six", as it is answer today for political purposes, is a absolutely doubtable political category. We cannot, as a appreciative nation, charm as allotment of our capital history, the achievement of awkward British intelligence. The Big Six has consistently been a allegory and we should let it abide that way
And so, the arbitrary of the aboriginal point I ambition to back today is this: 1. ONE: Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah is a arch ablaze in the apple and in Africa, a constant Pan Africanist and Nationalist, who the all-inclusive majority of Ghanaian absolutely accept is the Architect of their nation and who should be acclaimed on Founder's Day
2. TWO: There is no Founders' Day, because, all the added important bodies who contributed to our independence, including those who did not appetite ability for us as aboriginal as 1957, are acclaimed on Ability Day. They accommodate the illustrious Dr. J. B. Danquah, who should not be ever attenuated for his role with the CIA and in the Kyebi Ritual Murder Case, although we should not set out to put him on the aforementioned basement as Nkrumah
3. THREE: The Agitation over "The Big Six" and the "Real Founder's Day" is absolutely a antiseptic one, a backward-looking agitation that should be commissioned for article added advanced attractive and productive. Sixty-five years afterwards ability we should not be debating who the Architect of the Nation is. We should not be mis-writing our history to favour claimed and akin agendas. We should be absorption on why there is such a absence of ability basement and ability resources, such that this affair has become an affair at all
DOING AND SCRIPTING WHAT WE DO The additional point I ambition to accomplish at this abode is this: As comrades, we accept in the aftermost 65 years, focused on doing, on activity; afterwards devoting abundant absorption to scripting who we are, what we accept done, what we are doing, and what we will do
If we had the attainable ability basement and ability assets that ensure that the accurate appearance of the abounding issues that we agitation in Ghana today are laid bare, abounding of the issues we absorb time and activity on would be appear for what they absolutely are: non-issues
We accept witnessed the propagandists of assorted presidents afterwards 1966, analyze them to Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, afterwards any trepidation, some actuality adventurous abundant to put them on the aforementioned pedestal. This would not appear if assembly were to booty their time to calligraphy the absoluteness of anniversary of these presidents adjoin the abiding accepted that Nkrumah set in all spheres of our civic endeavour
What is decidedly aching for me is that Nkrumah was himself a scripter. First, there were his books; philosophical, deep, reflective, forward-looking, prophetic, and action-oriented. For those who accept not able it, it is not attainable to be at already abstract and action-oriented in the aforementioned allotment of autograph or at all
Beyond his books and papers, there were his speeches, anniversary crafted for the breach and anniversary demography you to academy in agreement of the bulk of data, knowledge, activity planning, and added that they contained. I will acclaim to you his speeches at the commencement of the Akosombo Dam, at the Commencement of the Atomic Activity Commission at Kwabenya, which I accept agitated his eyes for authoritative Ghana and Africa a nuclear power, and his accent at the aperture of the Ghana Academy of Law, and in particular, his delivery therein of his eyes for a absolutely Afrocentric arrangement of acknowledged education
Comrades do not adduce these writings in calmly attainable forms; they do not actively and strategically popularise them, including through cyberbanking popularization; they do not accumulate these writings and scripts animate in policy, bookish and bookish scholarship and debates; and they do not advance in allusive analyses of these with after events, abnormally those that seek to carbon history in agreement that are favourable to alone persons, their families and their clans
Resultantly, we accept a lot of nonsense on Wikipedia and in the textbooks that are acclimated to advise our children, that canyon for the history of Ghana. Let me allegorize this point with two examples. First, consistently, and in the aftermost several years, new actual on the Founders' Day is actuality submitted to Wikipedia. If beneath adapted accounts of these submissions were additionally available, and due to the safeguards that Wikipedia has put in abode to verify information, the adapted accounts will not accept the acreage day that they currently have. Securing such changes to that accepted dictionary, Wikipedia, is one abiding way to abate the role of Nkrumah as Architect of Ghana
My additional archetype is added dated. It relates to the bastardization of Nkrumah afterward his abolish as President. The barbarous accounts of his administration as President, by advisers such as T.O. Omari and alike Prof. Adu Boahen accept become the history of Ghana. They said, for example, that Nkrumah gave himself ability to appoint over and aloft the assembly but forgot to add that Nkrumah never acclimated that power, alike once. Kinder accounts of Nkrumah's administration as President accept consistently been kept beneath the bushel. Again, allusive analyses are missing
The Civic Liberation Council, which overthrew Nkrumah, appeared far added absolute than Nkrumah who they labelled as absolute and admirable of overthrow. They accused Nkrumah of common tendencies but went advanced to canyon the Civic Liberation Council (Prohibition of Rumours) Decree, 1966 (NLCD 92), issued in the actual year they took power, acceding 28 canicule of apprehension afterwards balloon and up to three years in bastille for journalists who ability "cause anxiety and despondency", "disturb the attainable peace", or "cause animosity adjoin the N.L.C". They accused Nkrumah of banning political parties, but went advanced to ban the CPP. Everything they accused Nkrumah of doing, they did in some measure. Back will assembly do a absolute analyses of these regimes so that we can all be bigger abreast about our accurate history
Whilst the NLC and the Progress Affair (PP) were actual anti-Nkrumah, there were abounding column PP governments that were either pro-Nkrumah or Nkrumah-neutral, and assembly accept no alibi for not bearing ability assets for our accurate history during those periods
To achieve on this additional point, if you do not calligraphy what you do, anyone, any day, can re-script history to honour their fathers and uncles in means that are not as admirable as they accomplish it to be. It is abundant to run a akin economy. It is allurement too abundant to carbon our history in favour of that Clan. Booty the bedraggled money and go; but leave our history for us
APARTHEID OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AND EPISTEMIC VIOLENCE Flowing from the additional point I accept aloof fabricated is the third and aftermost point I seek to accomplish today. There is a assertive ageism in ability assembly and epistemic abandon that consigns the aboriginal assembly of actual ability to additional place, and abaft Euro-American accounts of it
The concrete area and alteration of actual actual about Ghana in the British Archives and in CIA accumulator apartment in Langley, ancillary with the backroom and economics of analysis funding, accept ensured that the majority and the best accepted and accustomed advisers about the history of Ghana are expatriates. We are absolutely abaft in the basement for bearing bounded knowledge, including articulate history analysis and ability assets based actuality in Ghana
We charge to breach the trend immediately. If you apprehend books like "A Dam for Africa", on the Akosombo Dam by Stephan Miescher, it is bright that a artistic use of the ability assets that cannot be physically taken abroad would axis the advance of ageism in ability assembly and epistemic violence. Aboriginal Knowledge, articulate histories, archeological excavations (as is accident at the armpit of the Osu Castle) are all sources of different bounded ability that are accessible for assembly for befitting the accurate history of this nation intact, evolving alone in accordance with evidence-based research
Epistemic violence, is a primary admeasurement for any arrangement of domination. Ascendancy is not able alone by aggressive might, concrete repression, and bread-and-butter exploitation. It is accomplished also, as Enrique Galván-Álvarez has told us, "most chiefly through the architecture of epistemic frameworks that legitimise and apotheosize those practices of domination." Andrew Norman prompts us that: "Of course, the abnormality in catechism would not commonly be anticipation of as violence: it is too respectable, too academic, too genteel for that. It is abandon all the same, and deserves to be apparent for what it is." Anyone who has a botheration apperception Epistemic Abandon should apprehend Festus Iyayi's "Violence", a account of Bread-and-butter and Amusing abandon in Nigeria
Unless we affected Epistemic Violence, which angrily delegitimates, represses and sanctions our methods of enquiry; our means of knowing; our mechanisms for generating, autumn and utilizing knowledge; and abjure the continuing administration of alone added possibilities of knowing, we will never apperceive ourselves, and can never be what we seek and ache to be as a Nation
CONCLUSION I would like to end this abrupt abode with the words of our civic anthem. Sometimes, words become so familiar, so hackneyed, that we aloof grumble them as banal verbiage, not advantageous absorption to the abstract ethics and calls to activity that aggressive and still undergird them
For today, I ambition for us to pay absorption to those abiding words of our civic anthem, and I respectfully alarm on all of us to rise, as we boring recite those words, according to a clip that I will set: God absolve our citizenry Ghana, Emphasis is on GOD and HOMELAND And accomplish our nation abundant and strong, Emphasis is on GREAT and STRONG Bold to avert forever, BOLD, DEFEND, FOREVER The account of Freedom and of Right
FREEDOM, RIGHT