The speech of the Speaker on the Founders’ Day celebration that Nkrumah was only putting the icing on the cake of Ghana’s independence and the pledge by the Chief Justice that the judiciary was ready to adjudicate on electoral matters are the trending stories in Ghanaian press on Wednesday.
The Times reports that the Speaker of Parliament, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye, stated that when Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, made his famous declaration that “Ghana, our beloved country is free forever”, he was only putting the icing on the cake of Ghana’s independence.
“There were other bakers of the cake. Can you forget them? No. Our independence was gained more with brain than with brawn. This must be acknowledged,” Prof Oquaye, a former head of the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana, said at a lecture in Accra yesterday to mark Founders’ Day celebration.
The lecture, introduced last year, brought together government officials, traditional and religious leaders, some politicians, academics and representatives of various stakeholders.
There has been a debate over whether or not Nkrumah should be credited with founding Ghana or not. The debate, mostly between the Nkrumahist and the Danquah-Busia political traditions, culminated into the passage of the Public Holiday Amendment Act in 2019 recognising all other contributors in the independence struggle.
“Nkrumah was a great leader. He was one of the founding fathers, but never the founder of our nation. No matter how great Paul was, he cannot be the founder of Christianity, to the exclusion of Peter, James, John and others,” he said.
The newspaper says that seven Nigerians, who were arrested in Ho last Tuesday, by personnel of the Revenue Assets and Border Protection Unit after they entered Ghana through an unapproved route near Aflao, in the Volta Region, will be quarantined for two weeks, according to the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS).
“We will send them to a facility in Aflao where they will be isolated over the period,” said Deputy Commissioner of Immigration (DCI) in-charge of the Volta Region, Peter Claver Nantuo.
He said that the illegal immigrants would first be quizzed to ascertain how they gained access into the country through the unapproved route.
The suspects are Nwanku Mathew, 21, John Paul Achebe, 22, Dominic Sylvester, 20, Chukwubua Malachy, 27, Osinchi Kawase, 30, Destiny John, 31 and Bishop Pascal, 37.
DCI Nantuo said that the service was also making efforts to trace possible contacts of the suspects in Ghana, adding that, “For all you know they have friends and relatives here, who invited them to come over, and we need to look into that.”
The Times also reports that Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and Caritas Internationalis COVID-19 Response Funds at the Vatican, has awarded 99,785.56 euros grant to Caritas Ghana for interventions on COVID-19 in Ghana.
The implementation of the intervention, which would span over a three-month period would focus on the Catholic Archdioceses of Accra, Cape Coast, Tamale and Kumasi.
Mr. Samuel Zan Akologo, Executive Secretary of Caritas Ghana, who disclosed this in a Zoom Webinar Conference, said about 2,570 individuals are expected to benefit from the grant project.
Caritas Ghana is the relief and development organisation of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference (GCBC).
The Graphic reports that Chief Justice, Justice Kwasi Anin Yeboah, has said the judiciary is determined to adjudicate on electoral disputes that may arise in the run-up to the 2020 elections in an efficient and expeditious manner.
“We do not want any electoral dispute to be hanging for far too long. We want an efficient and very smart disposal of cases,” he said.
In view of that, Justice Anim Yeboah said the Judicial Service had commenced training on electoral disputes for judges and other judicial officers, especially newly appointed ones.
The Chief Justice was speaking at a meeting with a team from the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID), led by its President, Dr George Agyekum Nana Donkor, when the latter paid a courtesy call on him in Accra Monday.
The newspaper says that Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia will open a multi-day conference in Accra on Thursday at which eminent economists from Ghana and abroad are going to prioritise the smartest solutions to the country’s challenges.
The conference is organised by the Ghana Priorities project, a collaboration between the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) and the award-winning think tank Copenhagen Consensus.
Over the past 18 months, a reference group drawn from the public sector, private sector, civil society organizations, academia, the media, identifiable groups and individuals identified 80 of the most promising solutions for Ghana. 28 teams of Ghanaian, regional and international economists have researched the costs and benefits of each.
Now, this research is presented to a panel of eminent economists who will rank all the interventions and establish what will do the most good for every cedi spent.
The Eminent panel comprises Ken Ofori-Atta, Minister of Finance, Prof. George Gyan-Baffour, Minister of Planning, former Finance Minister Prof. Kwesi Botchwey, Prof. Augustin Fosu from the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana, Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, Secretary-General of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), Prof. Eugenia Amporfu from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and Prof. Finn Kydland, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
GIK/APA