By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
June 10, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The decision by Dr. Onzy Nathan Nkrumah to gun for Ghana's presidency would be quite exciting, and even laudable, were it not also constitutionally illegal (See "Onzy Nkrumah To Run For President" Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/9/15). If he really meant his publicly expressed desire to run for the presidency to be taken seriously, then clearly the first reason for which to summarily disqualify the half-Egyptian son of Ghana's first postcolonial leader is his ostensible sheer ignorance. And the latter, of course, inheres in the fact of the younger Mr. Nkrumah's having been born outside the country.

Secondly, those who know the man note that Dr. Nkrumah has spent most of his life abroad; and until very recently, when controversy swirled around his paternity, most Ghanaians did not even know about his existence. It is also not clear whether this particular presidential aspirant knows much that is significant and relevant about Ghanaian culture, including fluency in at least one of the major indigenous Ghanaian languages. You see, the presidency is a serious business that requires far more than mere genetic affinity with a Ghanaian parent, even a prominent Ghanaian like President Kwame Nkrumah.

But, of course, I fully appreciate his utter frustration with the sort of lethargic and uncreative leadership Ghanaians have had to suffer during the past two decades, particularly under the Rawlings-minted government of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC). It is also rather comical to hear Dr. Nkrumah predicate his desire to gun for the presidency on grounds that the present leadership does not take his views and advice seriously. This pretty much recalls some of the widely known and publicized dictatorial tendencies of Ghana's first postcolonial leader. And this ought to, perforce, put paid to the doubts of those who have publicly and seriously questioned the authenticity of the paternity of Dr. Nkrumah. On the latter count, this is what Dr. Nkrumah was recently quoted to have alleged to be his overriding motive for wanting to be elected President of Ghana.

"I was looking for somebody to support, but I couldn't find anybody to support. I may consider myself because this is too painful to watch and endure." Further, Dr. Nkrumah is alleged to have added, "I am tired of giving advice which people don't even want to listen to or hear. It appears there is immunity [sic] or indifference and politicians are just playing with words." It is not clear precisely why the younger Dr. Nkrumah supposes that he has an inalienable right to be sedulously listened to by any Ghanaian. leader. And particularly that any failure or refusal, on the part of any Ghanaian leader to listen to him, is tantamount to either heresy or a crime for whose punishment must be the unconstitutional imposition of an Onzy Nkrumah government on Ghanaians.

I mean, the guy has every right to think as highly as he wants about himself, as his ideal model of the sort of president Ghanaians need and /or deserve. But whether he has an inalienable right to force Ghanaian leaders to see and do things his way is a different matter altogether. It is also clear that Dr. Nkrumah, whose mother, like his three half-siblings, is of Egyptian descent, has a far greater and better chance of being elected President of Egypt, where he spent most of the formative years of his life, and where modern democratic political culture is much younger, to becoming president of a country to whose language, heart-beat and mores he is decidedly a total stranger.

But that the man indisputably suffers from what may be aptly characterized as "Messiah Complex," like his megalomaniacal father before him, makes him all the more ineligible to be elected President of Ghana. Whoever said "the apple does not fall far from its parent tree" was unmistakably talking about Dr. Onzy Nathan Nkrumah.

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