Prof Kwesi Yankah This is our heritage month and what about a little on the contemporary relevance of our national heroes: Ebenezer Ako Adjei, William Ofori Atta, Kwame Nkrumah, J. B. Danquah, Emmanuel Obetsebi Lamptey, Edward Akufo-Addo.
This historic month, I leak my notes on four of the Big Six I have encountered either personally or vicariously. Remember, these heroes are prominently featured on Ghana’s currency notes.
Ebenezer Ako Adjei , one of the Big Six, born in 1916, died in 2002.
His death in 2002 closed the political history of the Big Six founding fathers who fought for Ghana’s independence.
He occupied various ministerial positions under Nkrumah’s CPP. Attended Accra Academy, Lincoln University, Hampton, etc. He was great nationalist, and journalist. It was through him Kwame Nkrumah returned from abroad to be General Secretary of the UGCC, and later formed the CPP to struggle for the attainment of Ghana’s independence.
Ako Adjei is more than an interchange and was perhaps too big a name to fraternize with, even long after his hey days. I met him in the early 1990s long after Independence. It was the era of the NDC. Meeting such a luminary in the early 1990s was a source of pride. And it’s too bad we lost this humble celebrity in 2002, not long thereafter.
Happily, the Rawlings Government gave him a national award. It was a rare interview opportunity with the last of the surviving Big Six, and I grabbed the opportunity. I was an occasional writer for the great Uhuru Magazine, founded by Big Brother Kojo Yankah, and collectively produced by the Yankah Brothers.
I met Mr Ako Adjei in his house at Osu one evening, at the locality named after him: Osu Ako Adjei, near an Ako Adjei Park. The dialogue was very productive. The Big man did not come across any longer as overly in love with his previous pal, Kwame Nkrumah. Not exactly bad blood between them, but an attitude of cynicism towards Osagyefo.
The Big Sixer appeared peeved by Osagyefo’s projection above all of his peers. More importantly, he was sent to bring Nkrumah over from abroad to lead the UGCC, only for Nkrumah to end up ‘hijacking’ the Party, he lamented. But it was also because he had earlier been detained by his former pal for an alleged plot to assassinate Osagyefo.
He was bold to persistently refer to Nkrumah, as ‘that boy,’ during our chat. One […]
