The NPP – Its antecedent and threat to total unity – Rejoinder

I am hastening with this Rejoinder to correct the history in a publication in the Daily Graphic dated Monday June 1 2015. At Page 38 Opinion a piece titled “The NPP – Its antecedent and threat to total unity”

“J.B Danquah began the walk”: Danquah took no leadership from Casely Hayford who indeed was not leading any nationalist movement. He was one of the country’s intelligentsia who articulated the self-rule advocacy for the Gold Coast both in the Legislative Assembly and as a member of the Aborigines Right Protection Society.

The APRS became moribund until Paa Grant who was also a member decided to reconcile the rump of the feuding lead members Moore, Wood and Sakyi before Danquah was invited to the third meeting of a caucus at Sekondi [early1947] to put practical meaning to Paa Grant’s idea for the formation of the UGCC which stood for total independence. Paa Grant was a single handed founder and financier of the UGCC which he launched 4 August 1947 at Saltpond in the Central Region. There is no record for whatsoever that Paa had at any stage asked ‘Danquah …to do something concrete, thus the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) was formed …’What was that something?

Re: 1954 the NLM

The NLM’s formation had nothing or if any at all little to do with a mismanagement of cocoa affairs by the government of the day led by Kwame Nkrumah. It was the case of political manipulation of cocoa prices which at the end changed in favour of producers which included the Gold Coast, Ghana today. When that occurred the agitation was a request to the government to raise the price per load proportionally in ratio. That was would approximate 100% raise.

The economy could not handle that. The agitators were told in simple terms by then Finance Minister, K A Gbedema. Interestingly the new world cocoa price hike given by Gill and Dufus at the head as leading produce buyer at the international market coincided with a running dangling price of gold which affected the country’s earnings. Gbedemah’s riposte would be seen as an effort to use the cocoa price’s new hike as a kind of windfall to buoy the economy which had been sagged by those two manipulations at the international market.

This added fillip to splinter groups – the stranded rest of the UGCC (Danquah, Ofori Atta and Obetsebi Lamptey), S.G. Antor’s Togo Congress with Busia’s Ghana Congress, the Northern People’s Party (Tolon Na, S.T. Dombo and J.A. Briamah) and the Ga Shifimokpe (which included some other breakaways in Accra) all joining up with the NLM. The NLM was the spearhead of the demand for that cocoa price raise. It was confined to Ashanti which included then the Brong-Ahafo as we know it today. Ashanti region was the third largest cocoa producer in the country.

The delegation to London to petition the crown was about self-rule. The leader was not Nana Sir Ofori Atta I, Danquah’s elder brother. They returned empty handed. The protest of the Gold Coast people which shook the British to back down was the Ordinance Bill 1899 and the fight was made successful by the column of Prince James Hutton Brew who wrote in his paper “The Echo” under a pen name “The Owl”.

Finally, R.R. Amponsah, Victor Owusu and Joe Appliah: Amponsah, Owusu and Appiah were formerly CPP. Owusu and Appiah left to join the NLM they said “out of loyalty to being Ashanti and the Golden Stool” because the Asantehene’s Chief Linguist Baffuor Osei Akoto had threatened the invocation of the wrath of the “golden Stool”on any traitor. That made it straight Ashanti fight with the rest of country leading to the transformation of a movement [NLM] into a political party unified with the enlisted into the United Party” (UP) with the sole aim of opposing Nkrumah and his CPP. “YENTIE” was their clarion call. This was a remarkable shift from cocoa price to politics

Three of them were not MPs yet before that declaration; and they had quit the CPP, it was said after consultation with Kobina Sakyi who was collaborating with the opposition, according to Appiah in his autobiography. Apart from the question about what ‘something concrete’ Paa Grant is portrayed in that article as having asked Danquah to do there are similar historical ambiguities including the NPP’s history right to the end.

But once the rest of the piece deals with the NPP and runs into its present turmoil, I do not find it appropriate to make any comments that could exacerbate the difficulties of the Party presently. It is enough that I have to straighten out important inaccuracies because they are anathema to history especially where the record of a nation is concerned.

[NB: Readers may refer to the series I wrote in my Column a couple of months back in the Ghanaian Times headed “Straightening the Straighteners”].

Prof. Nana Essilfie-Conduah

1 June 2015

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