PROF P. L .O. LUMUMBA : unraveled.

Dear Nyaaba

It came to pass that I got to spend two nights and one and a half days travelling with PLO Lumumba. And his wife. In the company of many stalwarts, of many walks of life.

I could easily write about my dip into the life of the ‘politeratti’, for for some day and a few hours I got to experience it, but I will resist that temptation and tell you, briefly for now, about this simple man who wields a voice greater than the combined force of a hurricane and a tsunami.

Nyaaba, there is a phenomenon that puts the old akasanoma to shame, it’s called the social media and this man is an eponymous character in that ecosystem.

His claim to fame is his fearless and near-brutal objectivity when analyzing the travails of our continent Africa. He delivers in technicolour what many only dare to contemplate. He has a fearsome grasp of world history, contemporary and past and holds, at his fingertips, an almost proverbial depth of diverse knowledge, ranging from Greek mythology to African Anthropology. With these and a passion unmatched, he weaves his potent speeches and renders them in a quavering voice that leaves many awed, stupefied and challenged.

At table he is a gentleman with a ready tissue to dab off an errant dollop on another person’s lapel and most remarkably, while he has wisdom and knowledge galore to share, he listens with a beguiling attentiveness that puts his interlocutor at ease.

Another remarkable trait is his voracious appetite for knowledge, wasting no time on banalities like sleep, spending as many hours as possible poring over books and carefully stacking his mind with same. From two seats back on our return flight to Accra, I watched him, his left hand twisting his hair, dig into a book received a day earlier from Prof Ahwoi, I think. All the while, his wife carefully permitting him his “excesses” that she must now be used to.

A stalwart of law herself, she, to me, is the oxygen in his lungs and his anchor that grounds him in what sometimes must appear a thankless vocation but that’s all I will say about Mrs Lumumba for today.

I was lucky to dine with him and on more than one occasion I dared to opine on a matter, and to my exhilaration, my baby steps earned his approval, for example I divulged my ‘secret’ disagreement with the wholesale demonization of tribe and to that he said “I cannot agree with you more”.

Nyaaba, PLO doesn’t walk, he canters almost, few people can keep up with his pace, and to me that gave me the impression that he is a man on an urgent mission.

When we parted company, with a warm embrace, I left very grateful to Bernard Mornah for making it happen, to Mrs Lumumba for so graciously sharing her husband with the world and to PLO himself for finding the courage every waking minute to be the bugler for Africa, to speak truth to power, to call out the many ills and to galvanize all people with a conscience to the urgent business of the redemption of Africa.

Nyaaba, he hails from the land of Jomo Kenyatta but he is as Ghanaian, as Ugandan, as Malawian, as South African as any other person, in fact he is very much at ease in any corner of this besieged continent.

Your descendant
The Honourrebel Siriguboy

…to be continued… 

KWAME NKRUMAH, BURIED THREE TIMES, RESTS AT LAST!

Dear Nyaaba,

Family lore has it that anytime you were asked your age, you answered that you were the same age as Nkrumah. i wondered why the certainty but when I got to know that the two of you met, in Paga, when Nkrumah was making his rounds to canvass support for the Independence Movement, I concluded that you most probably concluded, quite logically after all, that you were contemporaries, having met him face-to-face. How I wish I had asked you how it felt to meet him but knowing you, you would most probably have said,’ he is just a man, like myself, maybe only differentiated by the fact that he had received an education’.

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. the young man from Nkroful, who dared to dream himself equal to his master, managed to immortalize himself in the history of the world, but of the history of Ghana, he stands as the head of the pantheon.

Nyaaba, of this man, the most accomplished griot will require a year to speak but i have but two leaves on which to scribble the things I have come to know of the times of the Osagyefo.

Reviled on the left and the right of the political divide, accused of knowing not what is right or wrong, the inimitable “show-bow” was guided by his desire to change the lot of Ghana and Ghanaians

Driven into exile in Guinea, Nkrumah became the first co-president of The Republic Guinea and it was there that he succumbed to his illness and was buried. In 1972, on the 7 of July specifically, whether actuated by reverence or mere guilt, his body was flown to Ghana. to his hometown, amidst pomp and considerable pageantry. His family, his kinsfolk , his compatriots especially his brethren-in-arms were all satisfied

Nyaaba, today is a very special day because the mausoleum that houses the mortal remains of Nkrumah and his lovely Fathia, having received a facelift, is being opened. President Akuffo-Ado should be complimented, he and his entire cabinet. The honour afforded Nkrumah is well-earned and will, hopefully, have the positive effect of spurring on other Ghanaians, to live and die for Mother Ghana.

Having been buried for the third time and the mausoleum finally receiving a befitting renovation, Nkrumah finally begins to rest in peace, what is required to give him a peaceful rest is for us all to steer Ghana back onto the path that Nkrumah placed her.

Long live Nkrumah

Long live Ghana