Daughter of Ghana’s first President, Samia Yaba Nkrumah, has accused the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) of advocating for the preservation of September 21 as Founder’s Day, only to score political points.
September 21, considered as the birthday of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first President, is earmarked for the celebration of Founder’s Day.
“You have to come to [the] conclusion that they are doing it for political gain, to score cheap political points, not because they believe in the man’s policies. If they believe in his policies, why didn’t they implement them?” she questioned.
Thousands of supporters of the NDC poured onto the principal streets of Accra to mark Founder’s Day on September 21 with a solidarity walk.
The current New Patriotic Party (NPP) government, led by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has tabled a proposal to shift the commemoration to August 4 to celebrate several other individuals they believe also played a key role in the attainment of Ghana’s independence.
But the NDC and several other Ghanaians hold the view that the move is meant to side line Dr Nkrumah and rather promote the establishment of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), a political party of which the NPP is believed to have originated from.
The NDC therefore organised a solidarity walk to mark this year’s Founder’s Day. Some individuals involved in the march carried placards some of which reads:
“We thank President Mills for giving us Founder’s Day”, “Nkrumah never dies” and “Nkrumah is the founder of modern Ghana” among others.
But Ms Nkrumah, who was a former Chairperson of the Convention People’s Party, questioned, in an interview with Joy FM: “What is the use of shouting ‘founder, founder’ and [you] go and implement policies that are contrary to the man’s ideas?”
She said the NDC superintended over an act of divestiture of state assets as well as privatisation of several state assets and “sometimes selling them to ourselves unproductively and that cannot be an Nkrumahist policy”.
She said the leaders of the country have allowed the country to be under the dictates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and submitting citizens to hardships as well as allowing big multinational companies to control the country’s seed markets.
To her these are contrary to what Dr Nkrumah stood for.
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
