President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, during the unveiling of the [email protected] logo had said that national monuments will be built in remembrance of Ghana’s 60th anniversary. According to the President, the [email protected] national monuments will be in form of projects which will serve as souvenirs for the country’s Diamond Jubilee.
Now, the 60th Independence Planning Committee is proposing a Heads of State Museum as one of the [email protected] national monuments to be built. The plan is for the museum to be located at the castle in Osu, Accra.
This plan was disclosed by Spokesperson of the Planning Committee, Jefferson Sackey while speaking on Citi Eyewitnesses News. According to Mr. Sackey, they are planning to make the Osu Castle a central archive for souvenirs of past Ghanaian Heads of State.
He explained that Osu Castle was chosen to house the museum, considering the fact that it is already a historic location and also to save the cost of building something new. He added that the castle is where most of the country’s Heads of State lived.
The [email protected] Planning Committe Spokesperson also played down on concerns raised as regards the Osu Castle being used at sometime to keep slaves, stressing that “it is historically a very key place for us to have a museum like that.”
Speaking further, Mr. Jefferson Sackey disclosed that the committee is still working on the cost of the Heads of State Museum which will be one of the [email protected] national monuments. He however said that there is little to worry about as there are notable commitments made during the [email protected] logo launch which are likely to take care of the cost if properly followed up by the responsible subcommittee.
That aside, Mr. Sackey said that the estimated GHC20 million for the 60th anniversary is meant to cover all the proposed projects and activities for the celebrations, including the Heads of State Museum.
Osu Castle, also known as Fort Christiansborg, is a castle located in Osu, Accra, Ghana on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean’s Gulf of Guinea. The first fort was built in 1659 by Danish colonialists. However, the castle has changed hands between Denmark-Norway, Portugal, the Akwamu, Britain, and finally post-Independence Ghana, being rebuilt several times in the process.
For many years, precisely between the 1920s and 2013, the Osu Castle served as the government seat of Ghana, although with some interruptions – the latest being when the John Kufuor administration moved the seat of government to Golden Jubilee House after 6 January 2009. But it was quickly reversed by the Atta Mills administration.
The Osu Castle has been visited by prominent world leaders such as American presidents, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Barrack Obama, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and Queen Elizabeth II of England. It was also at the castle that late president John Atta Mills was buried; in a bird sanctuary, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The castle is not accessible to the public.
This is not the first time the suggestion to transform the Osu Castle to a tourist museum has been raised. However, no significant action has since been taken in that direction. But this time around, with the apparent seriousness of the Akufo-Addo government and his crew, especially the 60th Anniversary Planning Committee, it is believed that something substantial will be done this time.
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