His Excellency Ex-President John Agyekum Kufuor who ruled this country from 2001
to 2008 has made unpopular comments regarding the founder of the State of Ghana, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, in which he attributes Nkrumah’s Government for lack of vision
and planning the economy which he took over from the British Colonial rule in 1957.
In the statement of Kufuor, as reported by the press, he specifically mentions that
Ghana’s reserve was depleted as a result of the monumental projects such as factories which Nkrumah built all over the country. My view is that a person like Kufuor who has lived through these times should have known, may be because he was very young, that these were investment projects which had both medium and long term impact on the economy. The economy was definitely going to improve since there had been a good foundation of planning in the Five Year Development Plan. The Consolidated Plan was also to bridge the gap that has been left as a result of the reckless marginalization created by the British masters of the Danquah-Busia tradition.
However, it will be prudent that Kufuor refers to the Seven Year Development Plan which was a master plan to propel us into a first world economy with massive development infrastructure and a buoyant manufacturing sector highly dependent on a diversified agriculture sector.
Read More: What is Kufuor’s understanding of the word “vision”?
In the Seven Year Development Plan was the policy to attract foreign investment as the private sector of our industrial development can play an important role in the economy.
Among these were to be production of consumer goods, local processing of Ghanaian raw materials, and the utilization of Ghana’s natural resources in those
lines of industries were large volume of investment was required. The Nkrumah
Government saw foreign investment in the spirit of partnership and not as a neocolonial relations to take uneven advantage of our domestic resources.
I don’t think any effort by leading elements in the NPP to denigrate the legacy of the
CPP Government will ever succeed. It is important to state that elements like Kufuor
benefited from the CIA sponsored coup which ousted the CPP Government when he
found his way to serve in the Busia Government, a regime that was well noted for selling state-owned enterprises and running them down to the grave. Let it be known to the ex-President that his Government was saddled with the worst
forms of corruption ever in the history of the Republic and it is important to remind
him of the many prime lands in Ridge, Cantonment and parts of Accra that were sold to private elite individuals in his Government without respect to the laws of the country.
It is important for Ghanaians to realize that the continues failure of the Akufo-Addo
Government creates a condition were Ghanaians will no longer recognise the NPP as a credible political party to be given another mandate to rule this country. Either an organised progressive group of Ghanaian youth take the mantle to create the
necessary condition to build a credible alternative or we forget about western
democracy style of duopoly where the CPP leadership now even fail to respond to
Kufuor.
By Thomas Abroni, Trobu