“See Paul, tell him everything. He is your ‘countryman’”!
Those were the words of Col. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong to me in his office: He, the Military Head of State of the Republic of Ghana and Chairman of the National Redemption Council (NRC) which deposed the Government of Prof. Kofi Abrefa Busia in a bloodless coup d’état on 13th January 1972.
‘Paul’ was Col. Paul Nkegbe, the NRC Commissioner for Education. I felt a bit uneasy about
the word ‘countryman’; but it was no time or place to show any sign of it.
It was clear that the Head of State had no time for a lengthy discussion with a students’ leader.
So, he was directing me to see the right person in the Regime.
I had arrived in Ghana just about a week earlier, March 1973, from the Federal Republic of Germany.
I had called on the Head of State as President of the Central Union of Ghanaian Students/ Europe, embracing Ghanaian Students Unions in various Continental Western and Eastern European countries as well as the Ghana Students’ Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So in a way, I was representing a substantial number of organised Ghanaian Students in Europe, whose views and opinions could be listened to by the NRC. On the other hand, it would be possible to find out what the Colonels and Majors were about with their revolution.
Yes, I did ‘see’ Paul. It was at the Ministry of Education in Accra. It was important for me to be punctual, coming from a very time conscious German environment and representing students who were advocating the idea of revolution of thought and action for our country Ghana and continent Africa. There would be no excuse for me to be late and then attempt to explain to a Military Officer why I was late.
After not too long a time, a tall nice looking, neatly and smartly dressed Army Officer with a staff in the hand came in, accompanied by his aide-de-camp. We all stood up and the officer carried a broad friendly smile. He was the NRC Commissioner for Education,
Colonel Paul Nkegbe.
My turn for audience came. Our discussions were written down shorthand (stenographic).
There was no rush. The Military Officer was very patient, listened and made his comments or expressed approval or a different view. I had to argue out things as we in Europe saw them.
Admittedly, I was not expecting to meet such a calm, intellectually open-minded Army Officer, after the stories that we had heard about ‘no sardine, no corned beef in the market’ sort of officers who staged the 1966 coup. I got to know only later, that Colonel Paul Nkegbe was a historian; so in a way, he was an intellectual pillar in the NRC regime.
Some of the items that we discussed were embodied in resolutions that the students had adopted in Europe:
- National standardisation: The Ghana Standards Board was established by NRC Decree 173 in 1973;
- Protection of the Volta Lake and other environmental issues: On 23rd May 1973, the NRC announced its decision to establish as a matter of urgency an Environmental Protection Commission. The Environmental Protection Council (EPC), NRC Decree 239, received the signature of the Head of State and Chairman of the National Redemption Council on 23rd January 1974.
- The introduction of compulsory military training for the youth and students of Ghana between the ages of 18 to 25 years: The compulsory military training did not materialise; however, the NRC regime started the National Service Scheme.
- Communication; the NRC regime laid the foundation work for the Nkuntunse Earth satellite station so that Ghana should not continue to channel its external telephone calls through Germany or Britain.
- Extending the national hydro-electric power grid to the Volta Region, so that activists who were agitating for the secession of the Region from Ghana at the time would have no support base in the Region. Eventually the German company Messrs Lohmeyer was commissioned to carry out feasibility studies. The NRC Regime succeeded in raising a loan from Germany through the ‘Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau’ in Frankfurt for the project.
- We drew attention to the fact that several leading car manufacturers in Germany and Japan had started exhibiting aluminium rims for lorry tyres. Ghana should endeavour to get particular companies from these two countries to get involved in processing Ghana’s bauxite into aluminium in Ghana. The NRC Regime did establish an Aluminium Commission and invited the German Company Krupp for discussions. Unfortunately, most of the Ghanaian members of the Commission were allegedly influenced to take the position that the project would not be economically viable.
- We discussed at length the topic ‘Education’: On the advice of a British consultant, actually embedded in the Ministry of Education in Accra, the NLC to Busia’s Regimes instituted regulations restricting the specialisation of medical students and postgraduate studies by Ghanaians after their first university degrees, especially outside Ghana. Before anyone could pursue specialisation or postgraduate degree courses in Europe at the time, one should first find a higher Institution in Ghana which would testify in writing that he or she would be employed by the Institution after the specialisation or the postgraduate studies. This was in effect restricting the number of Ghanaians who could acquire the skills essential to spearheading the scientific development of the country. At the same time, Ghana was advertising for specialists, for example in foreign medical journals! We argued strongly against these regulations. The NRC regime scrapped it. Col Paul Nkegbe listened carefully to my arguments establishing why first degrees alone did not equip students with the skills necessary to manage Research and Development of a country! Thus, many of us Ghanaians who hold Doctorate degree titles today partly owe our titles to the courage and far-sightedness of a person like Colonel Paul Nkegbe. If that policy had continued, it would have left Ghana in the medical, scientific and technological fields worse off than today: Ghana has produced world renowned heart surgeons, test-tube baby gynaecologists, space scientists and others, isn’t it?
- We discussed in detail the reactivation of the numerous projects which were initiated with technical assistance from the Soviet Union but were arbitrarily abandoned after the 1966 coup d’état. The reactivation of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC) was a case in point. I played the courier between the Ministry of Education and the Scholarships Secretariat in order to ensure that the Registrar of Scholarships, the late Mr. Benson, compiled the names of all Ghanaians who had been trained in the Soviet Union for the Kwabenya project for the attention of the Commissioner for Education. My suggestion of a particular Ghanaian Professor that I considered was suitable to spearhead the reactivation process was taken seriously. The NRC did take decisive steps to reactivate work at the GAEC.
- African affairs and the need to correct Ghana’s pro-apartheid policy of the Busia regime. We also discussed the possibility of creating a West African Economic Development Union. The NRC regime under Colonel I. K. Acheampong did eventually take the initiative and proposed the creation of a new West African Union when he met President Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea in 1978.
Colonel Paul Nkegbe and I met about four times at the Ministry of Education. Our interaction had become cordial and discussions quite frank. We even talked about the topic “revolution” and how to create patriotism amongst Ghanaians, especially the youth and school children. It was in this connection that the idea of the National Pledge was born. Yes, it is true that Colonel Paul Nkegbe and I worked on the Ghana National Pledge. Some persons in position of authority would have thrown away the piece of paper on which I wrote “I promise on my honour to be faithful and loyal to Ghana my motherland”. And it would have ended there together with most of the other suggestions that came from the students in Europe.
Then what would ideas be worth if there were no persons in positions of authority to accept and implement them?
The overwhelming majority of us in Europe were assiduously pursuing various courses in Europe: medical, science and engineering, technical, economic, trade and managerial and others.
We were to return as part of the “intelligentsia” to take up various responsibilities in the developmental process of Ghana in order to be part of efforts to achieve the accelerated industrialisation of Ghana, if possible to “do in 10 years what Europe took 100 years or so to accomplish”; to prove that “given the chance, the black man can do what the white can”!
The political, economic, social and educational climate which had developed in Ghana since the overthrow of the Government of the Republic of Ghana by the National Liberation Council, leading to Prof. K.A. Busia reaching his long cherished goal of becoming the Prime Minister of Ghana in September 1969, had confirmed our fears and observations:
Many economic development projects were arbitrarily stopped; thousands of workers for example dock workers in Tema were sacked; a retrogressive industrial relations act was passed, which in effect dissolved the Ghana Trade Union Congress and legally prevented the workers of Ghana from organising themselves. State properties were sold off cheaply to foreigners. Ethnicity in politics was being openly encouraged.
Prior to the NRC Regime in the early 1970s, the Ghana High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and the Ghana Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany were doing everything possible to discredit our Students’ Union. Not only were there attempts to form rival student groups; these envoys had even encouraged several Western Intelligence Services to survey our activities.
Our criticisms of the Busia regime’s educational, African and foreign policies and our demand for political amnesty for those in exile were dismissed as a “pack of communist slogans”. Ghana’s external debts were mounting to astronomical heights, more rapidly than the debts that the Nkrumah Regime was accused of having made! Many competent civil servants were sacked simply on grounds of ethnicity.
By legislation, Ghanaians were banned from showing Nkrumah’s pictures in public!
Would Nkrumah’s body ever have been conveyed to Ghana if the PP Regime were in power?
What do all these have to do with a tribute to Colonel Paul Nkegbe?
It is only when people know the conditions which pertained in Ghana before the bloodless coup d’état of Colonel Acheampong which deposed the Government of Kofi Abrefa Busia
that one can appreciate fully the positive achievements of the NRC Regime, notwithstanding their great failures which eventually ensued.
“The Evil that men do lives after them, but the good is oft interred with their bones”.
After many years of efforts to trace the man who was Commissioner for Education when I met him in Ghana in 1973, I succeeded at long last in March 2011 in locating the residence of Colonel Paul Nkegbe in Accra, at the Airport Residential Area.
Since 2007, I have mentioned in petitions to the Government of the Republic of Ghana that Colonel Paul Nkegbe and I worked on the Ghana National Pledge. Further, that the current lyrics of the National Anthem “God Bless our Homeland Ghana” being used since the 1970s was authored by me. In this regard, an interview with Colonel Paul Nkegbe would have been worthwhile for the national records.
I met Colonel Paul Nkegbe at his residence through the help of Dr. K. B. Asante in March 2011. He did recognise me and we got on very well emotionally just after a few minutes.
We talked about the old days and our discussions at the Ministry of Education. I eventually suggested that it was important for us to tell the country the great things that he had done for Ghana. He was hesitant but eventually agreed that I could arrange to come with several press men. It had been explained to me that he was no more in good health.
I did arrange and went with journalists from the Ghana News Agency and the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. The situation was a bit tense, the family not being sure what the Press might make out of the interview. The Colonel must have been aware that he was still a military man; anything he might say which could be misinterpreted would not be in order.
We eventually overcame the situation and he spoke.
Colonel Paul Nkegbe did confirm to the gentlemen from the press that we worked on the National Pledge together. He also did confirm that it was during their time that the Information Services Department chose the current lyrics being used for our national anthem.
He insisted that it was not politically motivated.
I recounted some of the positive achievements of the National Redemption Council of which he was a member and served as Commissioner respectively for Education, Industry, Agriculture and Health:
- Operation Feed Yourself
- The change from right-hand to left-hand driven cars in Ghana
- The National Service Scheme
- Scrapping the regulation restricting Ghanaians from specialising or pursuing postgraduate studies without a guarantee of employment by a Home Institution
- The creation of the Environmental Protection Council
- The creation of the Ghana Standards Board
- The reactivation of work at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission
- The implementation of the national pledge suggestion from me
- The laying of the foundation for the Nkuntunse Earth Satellite Station
- Initiating steps to extend electricity from the Akosombo national Grid to the Volta Region
- Initiative towards the creation of ECOWAS
- Getting a German Company to assemble Neoplan/Setra Buses in Ghana
- ET CETERA.
It would have been nice and appropriate to put on record in this tribute, the answers that
Colonel Paul Nkegbe might have given to my questions:
What do you consider were your greatest achievements?
Which of your achievements would you like to be remembered most for?
He did not talk much. He however indicated shortly that when he was transferred to “Industries” (Ministry of), things changed, but did not elaborate.
It would be proper that Ghana remembers Colonel Paul Nkegbe for being an outstanding member of a Military Government which initiated the above tabulated positive and far-reaching contributions to the national developmental efforts.
Probably, one day, we in Ghana would learn to acknowledge the contribution of people in our midst, whatever other things they may have done wrong. I have followed critically the functioning of several other Regimes in the Republic of Ghana after the NRC. As a scientist, it is difficult for me to recall any member of the succeeding Regimes, who had embraced the idea of promoting science and made such outstanding and far-reaching contributions to laying the foundations for scientific development in Ghana as Colonel Paul Nkegbe had done. His contribution was naturally in collaboration with his colleagues and others who served in various ways.
I called the family on 14thJuly 2011 with the view to suggesting the following: With their permission, I would take the initiative to get as many schoolchildren as possible to pose for a historical photograph with Colonel Paul Nkegbe, the man who saw to the implementation of the idea of the National Pledge which the children are taught to recite at school. In my view, we Ghanaians are not making serious efforts to document our national history for posterity!
I asked: “Dada Levina, can I talk to my senior brother Paul?”
The beloved wife answered: “Your senior brother Paul is no more”.
Paul Kwame Nkegbe had played his role. Judging from our discussions in 1973 and all what came out of them, I can authoritatively tell our people about the great things that he had done for Ghana. I CONSIDER IT A SACRED RESPONSIBILITY ON MY PART!
May his Soul REST in Perfect Peace!
Requiescat in Pace, Paul Nkegbe!
Friday 15th July, 2011, in Germany
