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Only mad 60-year
olds fault Kwame Nkrumah for Ghana's development
quagmire (3)
By: Prof Lungu
May 28, 2016
Accra, Ghana
"...The
Government and people of Ghana have two major
preoccupations: the first is to develop this country
as fast and as best as our own resources will enable
us to do, with a view to raising the standard of
living of our people, and enabling them to live a
much fuller life than has been possible in the past.
We embarked upon this work through our First
Development Plan which is now completed, and we
propose to continue the process of development
through the Second Development Plan which we have
already launched and carried — through its first six
months..." (Kwame Nkrumah, 9 January, 1960) .
Readers who have been following this
discourse know exactly what our primary interest is.
It is to provide the most credible, fact- and
data-grounded versions of the actual performance of
Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana compared to Lee Kwan Yew of
Singapore.
We are proving that the
Ghana-Singapore thesis where Kwame Nkrumah is placed
second fiddle to Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew is bunkum,
without data or fact at bottom.
Unless you
are a mad man, the period you would be interested in
would be 1957-1966, more precisely 1960-1966, being
the period there is comparative data for the
rational man.
This is the period and the
approximate time the two leaders were titular heads
of their states. Fact is, only mad, irrational men
(and they are always MEN as far as we know), will
sit in their living rooms in Accra and Kumasi, and
in some foreign capitals, and compose data-deficient
articles and comments that blame Nkrumah for the
inadequacies and failed leadership of those same
60-year old men and their friends, decades after the
passing of Kwame Nkrumah.
It is as absurd as
they come!
BACKGROUND ON RELEVANT ECONOMIC
DATA
Fact is, in 1966, when Kwame Nkrumah's
government was overthrown by
Ankrah-Harlley-Afrifa-Nunoo-traitor bunch backed by
"rascal" Busia and the Johnson CIA, Ghana owned an
amount from all sources that was less than 30% of
Ghana's annual GDP at that time. In comparison, the
British national debt-to-GDP ratio, was a whopping
75%. For the British, owner of a large empire system
that included Ghana, India, and Singapore, etc.,
that GDP to debt ratio been consistently higher
since the late 1930-1940s, a period that covers
World War II.
By 1936, Singapore was already
a major commercial, trading, and industrial port.
In 1939, the British completed construction
of a massive 54.39 square kilometer (21 square mile)
naval base in Singapore. It was not only the largest
dry dock in the world, it was also the
"third-largest floating dock", and could hold
"enough fuel tanks to support the entire British
navy for six months."
Naturally, by 1936
Singapore already had a Shell oil refinery, an
airfield, flying boat station, etc.
The
British never bothered to construct an oil refinery
in Ghana in 80 years.
But Kwame Nkrumah did,
in less than 10 years at the helm, in 1963.
All those British investments in Singapore, and that
singular British military expansion in that "Crown
Colony" required education, training, and employment
of thousands of Singapore workers on an industrial
scale. In other words, the naval base was a massive
economic and development booster for Singapore.
Economic "empowerment" programs of that kind benefit
generations at that location and region, including
benefits for the unborn, even after lost wars.
And it was surely not the People of Singapore
who paid for all of that, if we have a critical bone
in our skull, intellectual, as some of us claim we
are.
To the point, that massive naval port
project cost the British and its Empire, Gold Coast
included, a whopping £60 million...($3.8 billion in
2016 dollars).
Needless to say, if we must
connect the dots, throughout World War I and World
War II, the Gold Coast contributed massively to the
British economy and their war efforts. Therefore, it
is reasonable to suppose that the Gold Coast
actually subsidized the British "war and peace"
efforts to the benefit of the British and Singapore,
in more ways than one.
Kwame Nkrumah had a
sense for all those linkages, the critical mind he
was.
In a recent publication, Professor
Kwame Botwe Asamoah provides the following
observations by DR. Kwame Nkrumah about the Gold
Coast of the 1950s, a short decade after the British
spent that massive £60 million on the naval port in
Singapore:
"...In his address on the eve of
Ghana’s independence, Nkrumah pointed out that 'when
spending ₤124 million during the course of the Five
Year Development Plan, the CPP...received ₤1 ½
million in aid from...(Britain)...It was not a large
proposition and we had in return made our
contribution to the gold and dollar resources of the
sterling....The Gold Coast has contributed, on an
average, 25% of the net dollar earnings of the
British colonial territories, and, taking into
account our contribution of around ₤9 million a year
in gold, in the five years from 1951 to 1955 in
which the CPP have been in power, the Gold Coast
contributed a net positive balance of ₤150 million
to the gold and dollar reserves of the (British)
sterling area. It will be seen therefore, that
though the Gold Coast is small and, by Western
standards, not a very wealthy country, it has made a
significant contribution to maintaining the
stability of the sterling area..." (In Botwe
Asamoah, 2015).
If Ghana contributed an
average "25% of the net dollar earnings of the
British colonial territories"....(excluding ~₤9
million a year in gold), we must conclude that as
much as £15 million ($950,000,000 in 2016) of those
funds for the naval port in Singapore, to the extent
none of that would have been effectively fire-walled
(or as much as $950,000,000 in 2016 dollars),
actually originated from the Gold Coast. Those funds
were used to develop Singapore for the use of the
British and Singapore, all the way up to 1957, to
the events on the eve of the independence of Ghana.
In contrast, the construction of the Port of
Takoradi was the single most expensive project ever
undertaken by the British in the Gold Coast. But,
this was a project to serve their own British
mercantile interests a decade before the massive
Singapore project, in 1928. Even so, when colonial
over-lord Gordon Guggisberg trimmed his 10-Year
Development Plan for the Gold Coast:
"...from
1919 to 1928 because of trade recession after the
first world war, he retained the construction of the
Port with two other projects namely, 4800 km motor
roads construction and the Kumasi/Accra railway
line...The funds for the three projects totalling
about £12million were generated locally and farmers
contributed a great deal of it..."
In fact,
according to some other sources, the cost for the
most expensive project the British ever constructed
in the Gold Coast, in Takoradi, probably did not
exceed £3 million. Again, all paid to the penny by
the People of the Gold Coast.
Here is a look
at GDP per capita, if we must avoid that minor, but
important, distraction.
GDP COMPARED, GHANA
VS. SINGAPORE (1957)
One of the more outrageous
character traits of Nkrumah-bashers like Kwame
Okoampa-Ahoofe and Kwabena Yeboah who recently
confessed that he has been "....making this point
for years - this is how Dr. Nkrumah short changed
Ghana's development to augment his fanciful united
continental Africa...", is, you never can tell what
they were for, before they changed their minds on
anything. Further, they never have data to back up
what they say, except to present coup plotter
narratives and Johnson-CIA talking points, with
large doses of Cold War era newspaper headlines.
Before that "fanciful united continental
Africa", Kwabena Yeboah told the world:
"...First
of all, I am a firm believer of Dr. Nkrumah and his
accomplishments for our country and believe he is in
a league of his own in projecting the African
Personality - no African, present or past, has been
able to match this attribute, not even Mandela...".
So, we must now scratch Nkrumah's "fanciful
united continental Africa" and replace with
Nkrumah's uncommon "... accomplishments for our
country...he is in a league of his own in projecting
the African Personality."
And, we are
supposed to see that as objectivity, even balance,
from their side of the discourse.
Maybe
Kwabena Yeboah imagines playing the role, em,
"projecting the African Personality", could be done
for a song, for zero pesewas!
Maybe, that is
the reason they never bother to tell Ghanaians
exactly how much Nkrumah gave ungrateful Africans
who were not Ghanaians, for "fanciful united
continental Africa".
Nice try!
So,
these same Nkrumah-bashers without data worthy of a
scrap of respect, it is they who want the whole
world to know about their intellectual prowess,
their achievement as professors, the contracts they
have signed that conveniently prevent them from
directly addressing issues they themselves started,
and to support their mouth and electronic pens with
their own data, for all the world to know.
In
sum, we see it as the height of absurdity that like
many politicians in Ghana, these so-called scholars
and intellectuals never have data. They never speak
with data, preferring instead, to speak in fanciful
literature prose as they re-cycle coup plotter
narratives and Johnson-CIA talking points long
discredited by same US Government in official files.
To compare Ghana vs. Singapore under this
context, an elementary, but rational question to ask
is, what was the GDP per capita when they both
started. What was the GDP per capita when it ended
for one such that it was no fair comparison if one
were to compare one with the other when the other
was gone from the scene (either dead, infirm,
deposed, etc.).
For us, the starting point
for a Singapore-Ghana comparison is 1957, being the
year Gold Coast became "independent" Ghana and the
year the British granted Singapore "complete
internal self-government" and statehood.
British-educated lawyer Lee Kwan Yew would be
elected Prime Minister of Singapore 2 short years
later, in 1959.
Fact is, after the
unprecedented, massive accumulation by the CPP
internal government of "₤124 million" during
1953-1957 for the "Five Year Development Plan" for
which the then Gold Coast only "...received ₤1 ½
million in aid" from Britain, at the end of 1957,
Ghana's GDP per capita was just about 47% of
Singapore's. There is data from the World Bank and
other sources.
How, pray tell us then,
confederate-matemeho intellectuals, tell us how
Ghana and Singapore could have started on equal
footing.
Further, all village idiots can
fairly estimate that it would be a lot easier to
sell port and stevedoring industrial services at a
prime location such as Singapore had, with its
natural port, compared to selling cocoa beans,
timber, and produce overseas for which the same
Britain had never bothered to establish a single
productive factory in over 80 years of crown colony
plunder of the Gold Coast.
To be more
precise, in 1960, Ghana's GDP per capita was
$182.98, compared to $427.88, for Singapore. (That
suggests Singapore's was 133.84% higher than
Ghana's).
Again, how, pray tell us, tell us
how Ghana and Singapore could have started on equal
footing.
NKRUMAH'S GOVERNMNT SURPASSED
SINGAPORE'S:
Four years later in 1964,
through the efforts of the CPP government, Ghana's
GDP per capita was $230.44, compared to $485.36, for
Singapore. (That suggests Singapore's was now just
110.62% of Ghana, a reduction (or catching up by
Ghana) of 23.22%).
The next year, in 1965,
through further development efforts by the CPP
government, the difference in GDP per capita between
the 2 countries had shrunk to approximately 93.86%,
from a high 133.84% in 1960.
This catch-up of
Ghana to Singapore is seen a lot visibly in the
graph below. The simple graph shows changes in the
rate of growth/decline in GDP per capita between
Ghana and Singapore during 1961 and 1970.
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Ghana and Singapore during 1961 and 1970.
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The
figure clearly shows that in terms of that rate of
growth of GDP, Ghana outpaced Singapore during the
years 1963-1965. In other words, Ghana was actually
on track to perform even better in later years
thanks to the industrialization and import
substitution programs of the Nkrumah government.
But Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana-Centered/Ghana-Proud
government was overthrown in 1966 by the hands of a
traitor bunch of corn-flake-eating, ice-cream
puffing intellectuals and brainless military and
police brass who wanted to have their corn flakes
and ice cream to keep, after they had eaten them
all.
It is that class of so-called
intellectuals, mad men, all of them, who,
practically 60 years later, want to tell the world
that Kwame Nkrumah is responsible for Ghana's
development miasma, in 2016.
That is as
irrational as they come.
SOURCES:
1.
Prof Lungu. Only mad 60-year olds fault Kwame
Nkrumah for Ghana's development quagmire (1) (2).
Ghanaweb
(http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/browse.archive.php?date=20160515/)
(http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Only-mad-60-year-olds-fault-Nkrumah-for-Ghana-s-development-quagmire-440970/)
2. Kwame Botwe Asamoah, Ph.D. THE FALLACY OF
BRITAIN LEAVING HUGE SUMS OF MONEY FOR KWAME
NKRUMAH’S GOVERNMENT, 2015.
(http://www.ghanahero.com/Visions/Nkrumah_Legacy_Project/Botwe_
Asamoah/The_Fallacy_of_British_Leaving_Huge_Sums_of_Money_v2.pdf/).
3. History of Singapore,
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Singapore/).
4. Bob Hackett. Singapore at War! 2016.
(http://www.combinedfleet.com/Singapore.htm/).
5. David Meredith. The Construction of Takoradi
Harbour in the Gold Coast 1919 to 1930: A Case Study
in Colonial Development and Administration. 1976,
Transafrican Journal of History, Vol. 5, No. 1
(1976), pp. 134-149.
6. GhanaPorts,
(http://www.ghanaports.gov.gh/page/27/Takoradi-Port-Our-History-And-Future-/).
7. Robert Hill. The Marcus Garvey and Universal
Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol III,
September 1920 - August, 1921.
Visit for
more information:
www.GhanaHero.com.
Read
Mo'! Listen Mo'! See Mo'! Reflect Mo'!
Prof
Lungu is Ghana-Centered/Ghana-Proud!
Subj: Only
mad 60-year olds fault Kwame Nkrumah for Ghana's
development quagmire (3). (Definitive Serial).
Twitter: https://twitter.com/professorlungu
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