During his speech at the United Nations last week, President John Mahama said some commendable, even courageous things by today’s standards, such as the right of the Palestinians to a state of their own.

But his call for partnership instead of hand-outs is very clichéd now. Apologies to his admirers who think that a call for partnership and not hand-outs is revolutionary because it is even older than Nkrumah’s call for a Union State of Africa since the late 50s.

Our beef with the President, however, is his borrowing of the neo-liberal, neo-colonialist text to the effect that independence to Africa came with 'endless' possibilities.

Mr President, if that statement was so obvious at independence, then the Vice-President of the United States of America, Richard Nixon, representing his government at the ceremony would not have asked an interlocutor glumly whether Ghana could make it.

Even more to the point, President Nkrumah would not have needed to spend much time with President John F. Kennedy in Washington to get the American President to convince aluminium tycoon, Mr Kaiser, for the Akosombo Dam.

Africa, unlike what the latter-day revisionists are saying, was classified by majority of the Western world as doomed for failure - not a continent with endless possibilities - Mr President.

And so the world did not see “how brightly African could shine. ” It was Jamaican Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey who invented the ‘Black Star’ tag to consciously challenge the unflattering image of the black person held by those who held power in those days.

And for his trouble, he was sabotaged and persecuted to ensure 'that his scheme of industrialising Liberia as a start to industrialising Africa was stillborn.

And it was in similar but more dramatic manner that the courageous and realistically crafted optimism of Dr Nkrumah was thwarted by very similar forces to those who ensured the failure of Marcus Garvey.

So to say that “when independence was upon us and our possibilities felt endless, the world saw how brightly Africa could shine" is incorrect.

“Then, for decades that light was dimmed.”

Please Mr President, that light was not one that anyone gave to us. It was one that we conceived, gave birth to and nurtured.

And it was not dimmed by invisible hands. Those who dimmed it were listening to you not too far from their retirement homes in Washington and other states.

And the worse, Mr President, is this: “There was a time when killing seemed almost commonplace in Africa.’’ There was absolutely no time like that. This is just a creation of some fame-seeking Western journalists.

Cambodia is not an African country, neither are Argentina and Chile.

There was, of course, the Biafran War and Idi Amin, but Africa at no time in history - modern or ancient - took the lead in civil wars or brutality.

Mr President, you said “for decades the corruption, greed and depravity of a few caused the suffering of an entire continent.”

There might be some truth in this, but are you sure the situation is any different now?