Statesman and founding member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe, has described the first President of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah as the country’s “most visionary” leader.
He shared this in an exclusive interview with Samuel Eshun on e.tv Ghana’s Fact Sheet as he expressed his views on Ghana’s current political landscape.
Dr. Nyaho Tamakloe indicated that Ghana has derailed from the right path and the current environment portrays retrogression despite celebrating 66 years of independence.
However, he made it clear that this was not a new sentiment for him, as he had witnessed the country’s birth as a young man during Nkrumah’s time in office. “I saw the serious efforts Kwame Nkrumah put into the running of the affairs of this new nation born and how he put the structures in place for us to take off smoothly as a nation.”
He acknowledged Nkrumah’s efforts in implementing salient structures, building numerous secondary schools across the country and creating a crisscross of young people across Ghana through education, which he saw as a means of building unity. “Without unity, you can never run a nation,” he emphasized. Dr. Tamakloe recounted that there was tribalism during Nkrumah’s time, but noted that Nkrumah had taken steps to combat it, such as instructing teachers not to ask students to cancel their tribal affiliations when filling out forms. “Nkrumah had tremendous foresight,” Dr. Tamakloe remarked.
The former diplomat then discussed the impact of Nkrumah’s removal in 1966. “We started with [countries like Malaysia and Singapore] from the same graph. I’m not an economist, but we were doing well until his removal in ’66.”
Dr. Tamakloe expressed his belief that Nkrumah was removed when he was trying to do things that would have put Ghana on track to compete with other successful Asian economies.
