By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D. English Department, SUNY-Nassau Garden City, New York January 29, 2017 E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The inauguration of the 30-member planning committee for the Diamond Anniversary Celebration of Ghana’s Independence may be the best thing that happened to the country in a long time, knowing what we all know about the disastrous turn of events last year, under the tenure of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). I don’t know the exact regional breakdown of the membership of the committee, but I totally disagree with Mr. K. B. Asamte that the Independence Planning Committee is too large (See “Ghana @ 60: Planning Committee Members Too Many – K. B. Asante” Adomonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/26/17).

For a country with a population of some 30 million and 10 regions, selecting an average of 3 committee members to represent each region at the national level is not a very bad idea at all. To be certain, it all depends on the academic and professional backgrounds of the membership, as well as the kind and quality of input expected to be contributed by each and every one of these committee members. It is all too clear that woefully inadequate planning was what resulted in the name of Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta, the President of Kenya, being scandalously listed as the President of Ghana at last year’s anniversary, instead of Mr. John Dramani Mahama. And I would not be the least bit surprised if this national blunder of epic proportions, and inescapable global embarrassment, contributed significantly towards the massive electoral defeat of the National Democratic Congress last December. One has every good reason to expect a remarkable number of the Independence Planning Committee to be composed of historians, scholars, educators and performance artists and filmmakers. The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning is also expected to manage the cedis and pesewas aspect of this fiesta, instead of carelessly leaving this crucial aspect of the planning to a couple of thievish rascals who may be in exclusively for themselves, as reportedly turned out to have been the case exactly a decade ago. The ministries of Trade and Tourism must also be expected to smoothly collaborate and coordinate the public relations component of the event, which could well be used to raise quite a sizeable amount of funding support for the arts, education and science and technology development in the country.

The preceding, of course, necessitates the establishment of an efficient and transparent system of auditing, to ensure that every sector and social institution in the country benefits in some substantial way from the festivities. The celebration also needs to be decentralized in order to significantly maximize participation at the grassroots level. This is what participatory democracy is fundamentally about. For that matter, one expects regional and district, and even town- and village-planning committees to be established all over the country. The memory of the beginning of the reassertion of our liberty and dignity as a modern nation-state is one that ought to be heartily celebrated by all and sundry, irrespective of political suasion or ideological stripe and orientation.

President Akufo-Addo could also use this occasion to map out some of the specific details of his industrialization agenda for the country, being mindful enough to highlight the fact that Ghana’s first President, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, was staunchly wedded to the idea of the rapid industrialization of Ghana as the seminal lodestar and beacon of continental Africa’s postcolonial civilization. The ultimate sacrifices made by political icons like Dr. JB Danquah, a veritable martyr and Patron Saint of Ghana, as President John Agyekum-Kufuor once observed, also needs to be underscored.

Then also, one expects the University of Ghana’s Law School to be renamed after the de facto founder of country’s flagship academy – The Danquah School of Law. For, needless to say, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian Politics was also widely acclaimed as unarguably the foremost legal wit of his generation. It would also not be out of order to have a life-size statue of Dr. Danquah sculpted and erected somewhere on the Legon campus; for this great champion of Ghanaian democracy, philosophy and culture was also a poet, playwright and a literary artist of genius who contributed significantly towards the nation’s greatness and collective dignity in his lifetime.

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