Nkrumah doesn’t need forgiveness : Samia
Samia Nkrumah, the daughter of Ghana’s first President, says her father did nothing wrong to deserve forgiveness from the family and loved ones of the late J. B. Danquah.
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She dismissed what she called the continuous attempts to vilify her father’s legacy, describing them as “very dangerous.”
“If somebody wants to forgive us for a crime we never committed, it is up to them. Let us agree to disagree and we are disagreeing with the historical narrative – we are saying that there is another side of the story,” she said.
She was responding to the flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo, who on Wednesday said the Danquah family had forgiven Kwame Nkrumah for Dr J. B. Danquah’s death in prison after his arrest under the Preventive Detention Act.
While delivering a speech at the 50th Anniversary of the death of J.B. Danquah, Nana Akufo-Addo said all must “forego all feelings of bitterness and to say unreservedly to Kwame Nkrumah, his family and his supporters that we forgive what took place on that day.”
However, Ms Nkrumah, who is currently the Chairman of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), told Citi News that all the attempts being made to demonise and vilify Kwame Nkrumah were dangerous because “they de-cloud the vision; they overshadow a vision that would have worked for Ghana today had we pursued it.”
She argued that the only reason the CPP was responding to the issue was because they were determined to make people understand exactly what Kwame Nkrumah tried to do for Ghana.
Ms Nkrumah pointed out that the family of Kwame Nkrumah and the CPP “have forgiven the coup plotters – those who tried to assassinate Kwame Nkrumah over nine times or so. We have forgiven them a long time ago but this is not the issue.”
She said the historical narrative on what truly happened between Kwame Nkrumah and J.B. Danquah was skewed, adding that “We are relying on judgements by the court of law that convicted these people of their involvement in some murder case.”
“We are relying on declassified documents that have linked some of these people to Western intelligence,” she added.
Ms Nkrumah insisted that Kwame Nkrumah and his family did not need to be forgiven since “we have forgiven but this whole issue is not important for us.”
