Give due recognition to our historians - Prez Akufo-Addo
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has called for due recognition to be given to people who have helped in shaping the history of the country.
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In that regard, he called for greater recognition of the works of historians who undertook painstaking research to provide the public with information that ordinarily would have been lost on them.
The President said this when he launched a book written by Mr Aidoohene Blay Chinbuah, titled: Ghana’s Pride and Glory, in Accra last Tuesday.
The book was printed by G-PAK, a subsidiary of the Graphic Communications Group Limited.
President Akufo-Addo said quite often the work of historians served as a major contribution to the “understanding of how we came to be where we are and people from all walks of life and backgrounds who helped to shape that process”.
Nationalism
Sounding humorous, the President said he too was a historian, considering “the fact that a person whose pronouncements on our history provokes passionate controversy can be said to be a historian”.
He noted that controversy and passion were illuminating lights on the path to the truth and that historians needed to be guided by those qualities towards the ultimate goal of educating and informing the public.
Referring to the author, he said Mr Chinbuah, with his idiomatic style and sense of humour, had made an important contribution to the search for understanding.
“He has revealed many insights into the lives and personalities of so many remarkable people who are the subject of this brilliant biographies and whose lives are deeply woven into the fabric of our history,” the President said.
A concurrence of history
Mr Chinbuah, for his part, explained that the personalities featured in his book were chosen because of their outstanding contributions to the development of the state.
The motivation for writing the book, he said, was born out of the truth that a countless number of Ghanaians had made great contributions but had not been duly recognised, as the case should have been.
For that reason, he said, Ghanaians continued to enjoy what the nation currently offered them, oblivious of the fact that there were people who fought with their lives, resources and energies for the country to attain its current status.
He contended that the naming of roads after people who had contributed to the national cause was meaningless, if the citizens failed to appreciate why those roads were named after those people.
He recounted that 50 years ago, he returned from Great Britain to practise law in Ghana and that he was called to the Bar by the then Chief Justice, Mr Edward Akufo-Addo, the father of the sitting President.
Mr Chinbuah said it was interestingly coincidental that five decades on, the son of the one who inducted him to the Bar was the one who would usher him (Mr Chinbuah) into the realm of authorship.