Akufo-Addo Remembers Nkrumah During UN Address

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has reminded the world about Ghana’s first President Dr Kwame Nkrumah.

Delivering a speech at the United Nations (UN) 77th General Assembly on September 21, a day that fell on the birthday of Nkrumah, President Akufo-Addo recalled the main objective of the founder of Ghana.

“This is a global problem, deserving the attention of the world community for a global solution. Mr President, I am contributing to this debate on a date that has special significance for us in Ghana. 21st September is the date we mark the birth of our first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah.

“He would have been one hundred and thirteen (113) years old today, and it is worth recalling on this day the driving force of his political career, which was to contribute to the birth of a united Africa, i.e., a United States of Africa.”

This followed an outline of the insecurity and economic turmoil on the African continent, a continent which was at the heart of Nkrumah.

“Mr President, a case in point is the destabilising conflict in the Sahel. It might look to many, today, as a local conflict which affects only the countries in that region. We, in Ghana, know differently, we have watched in horror as the unrest has moved from the Sahel, inexorably, to the West African coastal countries. All of Ghana’s neighbours have suffered terrorist attacks, and some have lost territorial space to the invading forces.

“Furthermore, the terrorist pressure has provided a pretext for the unhappy reappearance of military rule in three (3) of the fifteen (15) member ECOWAS Community, two (2) of whom have borne the brunt of the terrorist outrages in the Region – Mali and Burkina Faso. It is development we are determined to reverse, so that the ECOWAS space remains a democratic one.

“All of us in the Region are being forced to spend huge amounts of money on security. This is money we should be spending on educating and giving skills to our young people; on building much needed roads, bridges, hospitals and other such infrastructure, which we are spending to fight terrorists or to keep them out from destabilising our countries”, President Akufo-Addo said.

He added that although it is based in Africa, it is a global problem deserving the attention of the world for a global solution.

Source: opemsuo.com/Hajara Fuseini