The managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr has criticised President Akufo-Addo for firing back at critics who claim that his Independence Day speech was full of distortions.
According to him, if President Akufo Addo sees young critics as unqualified to criticise him as far as the country’s history is concerned, then he (Akufo Addo) should not have read his speech at all; ‘unless he (Akufo Addo) was born in 1771’
President Akufo-Addo said at the ‘Ghana: 60 Years On’ Unity Ball 2017 that “this has been a very strange week. On Monday, I made a speech to the country which I tried to speak about how we became Ghana. And like everything I say, it has ended up in controversy. But that is how it should be. A politician who doesn’t generate controversy is a dull politician…The amusing part of it is that the people who did not live through the independence era – young people who came much after – claim that I distorted the history of Ghana and belittled the role of Kwame Nkrumah. The one man there who actually lived through the era, who was here in Ghana at the time, embraced me as having enhanced the image of Kwame Nkrumah. And that tells you everything about Ghanaian politics. That is President Mugabe. He gave me a big hug,”
In response, Kwesi Pratt said: “if that were the case, what was President Akufo-Addo doing talking about the bond of 1844. If people who did not live through the independence struggle have no right to appreciate history and to comment on history, then what was President Akufo Addo doing commenting on the bond of 1844 or the Aborigines right protection society? Perhaps unknown to all of us, our president was born in 1771 because if you accept this logic, then only a person born in perhaps 1771 could have read the speech that he read. In appreciating history, you don’t have to be a methuselah to be able to do that. And this jibe at young people is very interesting.”
The renowned journalist was contributing to a panel discussion on Radio Gold’s Alhaji and Alhaji.
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