Ghanaian statesman and retired Diplomat, Dr. K. B. Asante has described as “unnecessary” the celebration of Founders Day as a public holiday. He argues that the day could have been put to better use without declaring it a public holiday. Dr. Asante, who worked as secretary to Dr. Nkrumah, explained that a day in honour of a hard working personality like Dr Kwame Nkrumah should not have been a holiday. “Nkrumah was for hard work…this is Kwame Nkrumah’s birthday and we focus on Kwame Nkrumah,” he said. The Founders Day was instituted by the late President John Evans Atta Mills in 2010 and was set aside to celebrate the birthday, life and legacy of Ghana’s first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. In an interview with Citi News, K.B. Asante called on government to scrap the Founders Day holiday. According to K. B. Asante, Ghanaians “should celebrate him [Nkrumah] properly” by reporting to work at 7:30 am which was the scheduled time Dr. Nkrumah reported to work. He recalled that “we used to start work at 7:30 am in Nkrumah’s time and he was on time. You never hear the siren on the streets taking the President to work at 10:00 when we are supposed to start working at 8:00; and I think [we should] do that on Founders Day.” In a sharp rebuttal, a political science lecturer at the University of Ghana, Dr. Aggrey Darko, is of the opinion that celebrating the day as a holiday is not a misplaced priority. “If the nation believes that there are certain critical actors and certain critical individuals who at certain points in time had to sacrifice their times, their livelihoods and everything so we can have some self-determination, we need to remind ourselves of the contribution of these individuals so we can also assess our own contributions,” he explained. Dr. Darko stated that it is imperative for the general public to make a self-assessment of their personal contribution to the development of the nation while celebrating the achievements and sacrifices of Dr. Nkrumah. “We have to look at it in the light of our own developmental nemesis, our own challenges and whether indeed, we have had leadership plus followers who really have the interest of the nation at heart and not people who are literally interested in what they will eat and what their own parochial interest will be shaped by public policies and programmes,” he advised.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 16:32:05 +0000
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