Nkrumah’s statue at Kulungugu almost down

Even as government plans to do everything possible to eulogize Ghana’s first President, Dr. Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, Citi News is reliably informed that Nkrumah’s statue at Kulungugu is almost pulled down.

The statue was built there in the Bawku West Municipality where Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was bombed on August 1964.

History has it that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was returning from Burkina Faso after peace talks between himself and President Maurice Yameogo.

On his return, he made an impromptu stop at Kulungugu to acknowledge the chiefs, school children and people of Kulungugu who had been there several hours waiting.

At that point, some unknown assailants bombed Nkrumah and his statue was thereafter constructed to remember the incident.

He escaped the assassination plot but some school kids who gathered there to catch a glimpse of Ghana’s first President lost their lives.

When contacted, Acting Upper East Regional Director of the Ghana Tourist Board, Alhaji Hakeem Ishmael, bemoaned the state of the statue.

According to him, the statue risked being completely demolished as a result of road construction works. He proposed the construction of a school block and a library at Kulungugu in honor of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

In the hospitality industry, he said the region had experienced some tremendous improvement in that sector.

He disclosed that the region which could boast of only 29 hotels and guest houses between 2005 and 2006, recorded 80 in the year 2013.

He indicated that the Ghana Tourist Board had embarked on an exercise to close down hotels and guest houses operating illegally.

He said plans were afoot to reinvigorate all the tourist sites in the Upper East Region.