By all standards, the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo delivered a spirited speech on the 60th Independence Day anniversary celebration last Monday 6th March 2017.
The speech was heavy laden with the story of our struggle for independence from the colonial master Great Britain. Following the speech, differences in the accounts of events leading to independence in 1957, have re-emerged strongly.
Some have accused the president of presenting a revisionist account of what transpired, while others have chided him for deliberately leaving out significant occurrences such as the Kulungugu and other bombings that were intended to take away the life of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, first President of Ghana who led the final struggle to independence and has therefore been accorded the enviable position of Founder of our nation.
The president also spoke of the need to begin conversations around big dreams that will transform the country, his alleged attempt to re-write the history of our recent political past, has assumed prime place on the agenda of national discourse.
The President also gave us a heads up on the devastating effects of degrading our environment coupled with the fact that we have run out of excuses for our inability to manage our national resources towards transformational development.
I would have preferred conversations around the big dreams that the president mentioned and charge him to cast one as the new leader of Ghana.
A dream around which he could easily mobilise the people for its attainment, because it speaks more to our destiny than our history. I appreciate history and I know the relevance of history to our future. But I do not believe an endless debate over what I also know, we will never reach consensus on, is worth spending anything on.
To that end, I have accepted in the context of values clarification; that followers of the Nkrumah tradition will never yield to the Busia-Danquah tradition and vice versa, on the struggle for independence story.
In fact, that consensus is a mirage that will never actualize until Ghana elects that new crop of progressive, centrist, pragmatic and forward looking President who for the sake of our nation’s destiny, accepts to buy all sides of the story of the struggle.
These and many other developments in our politics and governance make me believe that there is a big room for an alternative party led government, capable and willing to embrace the nation in its entirety, its people, history and politics for that brighter future.
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