Professor Agyemang Badu Akosa, former Director General of the Ghana Health Service and a leading member of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), has urged Ghanaian youth to challenge the status quo to ensure transformational leadership.

He noted that most youth in the country had lost hope and not willing to challenge the status quo even though their youthful nature demanded them to do so.

Prof. Akosa made the remark at a public forum in Accra last Saturday, organised by the Youth Wing of the CPP to mark the nation’s Founder’s Day.

The forum, which was on the theme: “Why the 1992 Constitution is a criminal imposition on Nkrumah, Ghanaians and Africans,” was attended by Madam Samia Yaba Nkrumah, the party’s chairperson, Council of Elders and other leading figures of the party, the academia, students, pupils and the public.

Prof. Akosa said, “I expect the youth of the country to come together to fight their cause; the event that led to the formation of the CPP in 1949 was centred on a young man in the person of Dr Kwame Nkrumah who was fighting the cause of the ordinary people”.

He recounted that Wallace Johnson of Sierra Leone and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria were the first to declare self-government in the Gold Coast with the aim of forming a union government in British West Africa and were subsequently barred by the colonial authorities from entering the country.

He observed that Nkrumah led the struggle for “self-government now” in the then Gold Coast, which consequently led to the nation’s independence.

“The reason why some people sought to strangle Nkrumah was that he stood up for the vulnerable and the youth of the country.

“Some people who opposed him were of the mentality that their birth right was to rule this nation and their descendants still harbour the same mentality,” he stated.