February 24, the Day Progress Died in Ghana

E. Ablorh-Odjidja

February 24, 2017

Spoiler alert -  Soon to be published A BOOK on my REFLECTIONS ON KWAME NKRUMAH.

 On this day February 24, 1966, Lt. Colonel Kotoka, Major Akwasi Afrifa, and the Armed Forces of Ghana, at the instigation and with copious help from Western interests, took upon themselves a mandate for the forceful removal from office of the constitutionally elected president of the Republic of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

And thus began the tailspin in the entire affairs of Ghana.

As one writer was to describe it later, it was also the beginning of the “celebration of traitors.” 

 The soldiers, now the National Liberation Council (NLC), became instant heroes and Accra International Airport was named after Kotoka.

Western interests were delirious about the outcome of Nkrumah's overthrow.  Even Canada supported the coup, as one writer, Yves Angler described it: 

 He said, "During the three years between 1966 and 1969 the National Liberation Council military regime, received as much Canadian aid as during Nkrumah’s ten years in office with $22 million in grants and loans. Ottawa was the fourth major donor after the US, UK, and UN."

Blind to these Western nations' objectives, some Ghanaians were also absolute in their beliefs that the coup was for the good of Ghana. The soldiers had saved the nation from Nkrumah, the dictator.

 And the soldiers, encouraged by the support, naively named the coup a “Glorious Revolution.”

 To no one's surprise, at least not Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's, this coup was to bring in many ills in its train; some wickedly consequential and others devastatingly worst.

It has been some fifty years since the February 24th coup. You would today think that some of our fellow citizens, knowing better now, would show, at least, a hint of remorse; but not quite.  The opposite is happening.

Overall, there has never been an open regret: A staging of a national day of soul searching from any of the succeeding regimes since 1966 - for a coup that was so inapprehensive of the past and, therefore, went so wrong.

 Instead, there have been many attempts to justify this coup, even in the face of contradicting historical revelations, namely, the fact that the 1966 coup was not a product of Ghanaian discontent, but that invented by external forces, the CIA in the lead, on the intent of keeping Ghana and Africa under the yoke of colonialism. 

In short, the coup was a culmination of the effort to force us back to a state of dependency, for the colonial exploitation and rape of Africa to continue.

Thus, a catastrophic force was released.  And that force would rage for years; destroying new ideas, the national character, and the novel "can-do" political culture that was unleashed at independence.

 The destruction has continued to this day and now weighs heavily against our future progress.

 President Limann was the last to suffer the terrible fate of a coup on December 31, 1981.  After two years in office and halfway through his first term, he was toppled.

 Busia was also blown away similarly after a couple of years as Prime Minister.  His support of the February 24th coup against Nkrumah, though misguided, did not make his departure less tragic.

 Next to go were Generals Acheampong and Akufo, who formed part of the successive military regimes since the NLC overthrew Nkrumah in 1966.

 And then came Rawlings and his regime.  He was to rule for 19 long years over chaotic scenes of several attempted coups and blood-shedding. 

The executive of state was toppled, discipline in institutions like the army upended, judges murdered and many able citizens were forced into exile never to return. 

“Reap the Whirlwind.,” Geoffrey Bing, the British expatriate Attorney General under Nkrumah, was to famously state in the iconoclastic title of the book by that same name. 

 With that book, Bing produced one of the most gripping accounts of the period before and after 1966.

 Any reader would have found Bing's book unsettling as he or she discovered how Nkrumah's plans and revolutionary ideas for Ghana were seriously damaged and buried with the advent of the February 24, 1966 coup.

 Yet, that day of infamy continues to be celebrated to this day.

 Kotoka still has a presence in a memorial called Kotoka International Airport, this general who in a saner society would have been called a traitor!

This Kotoka memorial is mind-shattering.  It begs the question of the kind of people we are today, just as, at the same time, it serves to remind others of the oblivious mindset we have collectively developed as a people.

The damage in 1966 and the indiscipline that the coup engendered extended as far as the killings of judges and other personalities under Rawlings. 

The cost of the destruction of lives, the truncating of ideas, and the dearth of progressive spirit that Nkrumah unleashed after independence cannot be quantified, but it is still palpable today.

Kwame Nkrumah was the founder of modern Ghana and her best leader, if not the most prominent African leader ever.

 After his removal from office, he was to die in exile in Guinea in 1972.

 He left in books, examples of governance, political activism across the continent, and ideas that could still help salvage situations in Ghana and Africa, even today.

Instead of honor, there have been many attempts to tarnish Nkrumah's legacy by successive governments and regimes in Ghana; notably by offshoots of the opposition party that hated him most.  And the attempts are still ongoing. 

 February 24, 1966, cannot be enshrined as justifiable.  And never should be in the eyes of the true Pan-Africanist.

 Fortunately, some who lived in that era of the 60s and others who have taken the time to think of the historical impact of February 24th will attest that February 24, 1966, was a day of infamy.

 The assertions of faults that were sighted in governance to enable the coup were none of Nkrumah's creation.   They were manufactured in the doings of the very people who pointed the finger at Nkrumah. 

Those fabricated “wrongs” under Nkrumah were made to look very real by the coup makers.  Unfortunately, the ills they imagined for the Nkrumah regime became real and magnified under the various corrupt military regimes that followed after Nkrumah.

The only excuse that could be deemed memorable and, therefore, a lasting testament to the characters of the soldiers who staged the February 24 coup against Nkrumah would be an admission from the grave that they were very, very naive.  They had reversed the very policies that could have built Ghana into a truly independent state.

 There was a bright time during the messy period after Nkrumah when President John Kufuor came into office in 2001. 

 Under Kufuor, there was no need for  "policy reversals," the political culture that had characterized many of the preceding regimes since Nkrumah. 

 Kufuor was even to implement some of the ideas in some of Nkrumah's development plans.

 Thus, from 2001 to 2008, we had a good glimpse of what might have been, the glory that would have been Ghana, the forward-ever movement, had Nkrumah's ideas, at least some, continued after 1966.

It remains to be seen if the same spark under President Kufuor can be achieved under the current administration of President Nana Akufo-Addo.

 Check The Rise and Fall of Nkrumah.

 E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, February 24, 2017.

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