Kwaku Darko Ankrah, a historian, has criticised President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for selecting August 4 as Founders\u2019 Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2019, Parliament passed a law establishing August 4 as Founders\u2019 Day to honour the collective efforts of those who contributed to Ghana\u2019s independence struggle, while designating September 21 as Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This decision sparked protests from individuals and groups who believed in Nkrumah\u2019s singular role in the country\u2019s founding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, in his 2024 Founders\u2019 Day address on Saturday, August 3, President Akufo-Addo firmly rejected the notion that Ghana was founded by a single individual, disagreeing with claims that Kwame Nkrumah single-handedly founded Ghana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an interview with Bernard Avle on The Point of View<\/strong><\/em>on Channel One TV<\/strong><\/em>, Kwaku Darko Ankrah described the President\u2019s decision as \u201ctotally wrong,\u201d emphasising that August 4 marks the formation of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n He argued that several individuals laid the foundation by playing key roles in Ghana\u2019s independence before the emergence of the Big Six, stating that the President truncated their contributions by choosing August 4 to mark Founders\u2019 Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe President was totally wrong when he selected August 4, you state August 4, it means that you are truncating the work others have done\u2026.the significance of August 4, is the formation of UGCC, it\u2019s a political party. Never, how can you use a political party\u2019s formation as the foundation of Gold Coast?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThen we should go back to about March 8, 1897, as the formation of Gold Coast, because that is where the Aborigines\u2019 Rights Protection Society (ARPS) was founded to save the lands of this country. For me, I don\u2019t understand the August 4.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He recommended selecting a date that would unify the citizenry, rather than create divisions and warned that the date might be changed by future governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUnifying the country is very important, it\u2019s not about the personal interest as a people belonging to the Danquah-Busia tradition or anybody, no, it\u2019s about unifying the country. So, the date itself must be able to unify the people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, if you use the date that your party or the grandparent of your party started as a celebration day, other political parties will have cause to blame you, and when they also get political power, they will try to [change it].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kwaku Darko Ankrah, a historian, has criticised President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for selecting August 4 as Founders\u2019 Day. In 2019, Parliament passed a law establishing August 4 as Founders\u2019 Day to honour the collective efforts of those who contributed to Ghana\u2019s independence struggle, while designating September 21 as Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Day. This decision […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":40961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43,1],"tags":[13052,10484,10344,1969,3577,192,5918,8601,11493,12920,11334,10342,5146,1198,3805,7669,11459,10415,594],"class_list":["post-43556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-akufo","tag-convention","tag-emergence","tag-founders-day","tag-future","tag-ghana","tag-gold","tag-independence","tag-interview","tag-kwaku-darko-ankrah","tag-kwame-nkrumah","tag-law","tag-nkrumah","tag-parliament","tag-president","tag-president-nana-addo-dankwa-akufo-addo","tag-ugcc","tag-work","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43557,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43556\/revisions\/43557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}