Beyond Nkrumah Park, a Madame Tussauds
Last Saturday, September 21, after over 40 years of advocacy, pleas, threats, legal wrangling in court, often daggers drawn between Old Students and the Nsein Traditional Council, Kwame Nkrumah finally got his name back on a school he built.
The coup makers of February 24, 1966, burnt Nkrumah’s books and removed his name from all institutions named after him. What they did not factor in the futility of their thinking was one fact of human life, that in this world you can’t burn knowledge, nor bury a name.
Today, Nkrumsco is back. I am referring to the momentous occasion, last weekend, when the Paramount Chief of Nsein Traditional Area joined hands with Old Students to inaugurate the renaming of the school from Nsein SHS back to Kwame Nkrumah SHS.
Gone: the acrimonious battles and muscle-flexing to show where power lay. Welcome: ideas and funds to return the school to its 1960-70s glory when, as a Category A school, Nkrumsco rivalled the Achimotas, Mfantsipims and Adisadels.
This was the school where students ate jollof cooked with fried corned beef, and washed down everything with hot Ovaltine!
This week, I have an idea to sell. Actually, the idea belongs to 90-year-old Frank Apeagyei.
If he ever asks me what I’d write on his call card, it would be as follows: journalist, PR guru, historian and political strategist; the man who built and operated Ghana’s first discotheque; the man to whom is credited the change of name from AGIP to GOIL in 1976, as well as the change of logo from the fire-breathing dog with six legs to the pre-2012 fleet-footed deer.
Here’s his life-transforming proposal: breathe more life into the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park and multiply visitor arrivals by creating a museum-within-a-museum.
He is proposing the replication of London’s Madam Tussauds concept by creating additional space within the present Park for a hall where the effigies of all the famous and notorious people in Ghanaian history will be on exhibition, a minor museum where the “Total History” of Ghana will be on display.
The wax figures and cardboard cutouts at Tussauds include historical and royal figures, film, music and sports stars.
On display are royalty, the latest addition being King Charles III and Queen Camilla.
In between royalty and religion, represented by Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, there is also space for comedy, atop which list is evergreen Charlie Chaplin.
Of course, can there ever be Madam Tussauds without Lady Gaga, Cristiano Ronaldo, Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler!
It has space for even a Chamber of Horrors, populated with some of London’s darkest crime scenes of the past 150 years, including the notorious criminal of all time, Jack the Ripper (1880s).
Typically, in a Ghana version of Madam Tussauds, politicians will fight to be in the front row, namely the Big Six, Busia, Joe Appiah, Baafour Akoto, Paa Willie, etc; next, religion featuring Okomfo Anokye, Akonedi, Kweku Firi, Cardinal Turkson, Father Campbell, Mensa Otabil, Duncan Williams, Nai Wulomo.
Ghanaian royalty will include Nana Kwesi Ankah, Omanhen of Abura-Odonase who, with seven others, signed the Bond of 1844.
Prostitutes will be represented by Ataa Baasi, the first Ghanaian prostitute in recorded history, who plied her trade at Adum, Kumasi.
In addition to coup plotters and/or populist military characters such as Kotoka, Afrifa and Rawlings, there should be space for true makers of political history, such as Jacob Wilson Sey and Paa Grant, not relegating entertainers such as Bob Cole and E.K. Dadson.
The Sports section will feature the peerless Ohene Djan. With him in the corner will be Boxing’s Roy Ankrah, David Kotei Poison and (of course), Azumah Nelson, and Edward Acquah, Robert Mensah and Abedi Pele.
Immediately behind business ‒ B.A Mensah, Edward Osei Yaw Boakye (Boakye Mattress), Siaw of Tata Brewery – will be criminals, the foremost being Atta Ayi.
I will place INVENTORS in front of politicians and they will include Dr Thomas Mensah, the fibre optics man; a few Kantanka inventions.
Science will feature Prof. Charles Odamtten Easmon who performed the first successful open-heart surgery in Ghana in 1964, and the global icon, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, first African to do a heart transplant.
In the women’s corner will be Justice Annie Jiagge but should include Madam Ekua Donkor, the total illiterate whose reputation in elections eclipses the so-called highly educated lawyers, consigning them to a distant 100 votes.
Frank Apeagyei is prepared to put down an initial GH¢10,000 for preliminary research. He will spearhead the fund-raising.
Question: Will this “minor museum” not eclipse the reputation of Kwame Nkrumah? Apeagyei believes that Osagyefo is larger than life. “Even from prison, he beat his opponents hollow!”
In the 1951 general election, conducted by the British colonial government, his CPP beat UGCC by 34 seats to 3. For the Accra Central seat, Nkrumah obtained 22,780 from the 23,122 votes cast.
“But,” insists Apeagyei, “we need to make his park livelier”.
The writer is Executive Director,
Centre for Communication and Culture.
E-mail: ashonenimil@gmail.com