• If the stories we were told while growing up are true, then Kwame Nkrumah and other pan-Africanists that have long departed are somewhere in the supernatural watching proceedings as events unfold in our world today.

    How will Nkrumah feel around those who never believed in the emancipation of Africa, and had warned him while they still walked the face of the earth that his fight and struggle for African unity would amount to nothing? Almost six decades after his death, it appears they were right.

    Have we made our dear Nkrumah a laughing stock especially to the Comprador Bourgeoisie who sat at the toes of the colonial masters and performed their biddings?

    It is sad to admit that despite the legacy and struggle of great men like Nkrumah who gave their lives in battle for a united Africa, the continent is still far from achieving any significant progress in that regard.

    Nkrumah did not deliberate too much on the problems of Africa as a continent and a people; rather he sought to provide a solution that will not only heal the wounds inflicted by slavery and colonialism but would make Africa great. He gave a formula for Africa’s success, and he summed it all in his message of unity.

    It was Nkrumah’s believe that for Africa to succeed in any phase or experience any meaningful development, she must first unite her territories and borders which were divided by the colonial masters.

    According to him, Africa was divided into odd nations at the Berlin 1884–85 conference so that the continent can be captured. The colonial masters in their wisdom found out that it was easier to defeat Africa in bits rather than as a whole.

    They succeeded in dividing the continent into 54 odd nations, with some countries containing tribes and region which have no business together. This is one of the reasons behind the constant inter-ethnic and inter-religious crisis in the continent today.

    Nkrumah believed that breaking the identity of nationalities and embracing the identity of the African continent to which we will belong is the key to peace, development, and progress in the continent.

    He said time and again that unless we have one army, one currency, open borders/regional integration, one capital, one voice, and one mandate, we will continue to be at the mercy of the erstwhile colonial masters.

    Today, many years after Nkrumah’s death, African leaders are nowhere close to a consensus in achieving any of Nkrumah’s policies. They go about rising monuments in Nkrumah’s name and sing his praise at campaigns to win cheap political points, but they refuse to honor his legacy or adopt his submission.

    All of Nkrumah’s warnings and his prophecies of what was to come is fully upon us. Africa is in the belly of neo-colonialism and as sad as it is to admit, we have indeed made Nkrumah a laughing stock.

    Africa, why have we done this?

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