Dep. Chief of staff justifies Ghana @60 August 4 celebrations

Deputy Chief of Staff and a member of the Ghana @60 Planning Committee has justified reasons for government seeking to hold a memorial and thanksgiving service as well as a lecture on Friday, August 4.

Samuel Abu Jinapor says the date which marks important dates in Ghana’s political history adding the President will be the guest of honour at the Saltpond event.

August 4 may not mean much to some Ghanaians, but for historians and politicians, it is a significant date in the country’s history books.

On August 4, 1897, the Aborigines Rights Protection Society (ARPS), a group critical of colonial rule was formed in the then Gold Coast.

Traditional leaders and the educated elite originally established it to protest the Crown Lands Bill of 1896 and the Lands Bill of 1897, which threatened traditional land tenure.

The ARPS became the main political organisation that led organised and sustained opposition laying the foundation for political action that would ultimately lead to Ghanaian independence.

Also significant to note was August 4, 1947, when the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), the mother party from which the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was birthed, was formed.

For the reason, Mr Jinapor explained to Joy News that Committee is holding the event to celebrate the establishment of the UGCC.

“Later in the day, there will also be an official 60^th Anniversary Independence lecture at the National Theatre in Accra to be addressed by the Speaker of Parliament, Prof Aaron Mike Ocquaye,” he said.

The topic for the lecture is ‘Fourth August, Ghana’s Day of Destiny’.

Mr Jinapor acknowledged the committee’s decision will generate political debate but justified it.

“We came to these conclusions upon very thorough and deliberate thoughts. We think that we can have the difference in opinion, inferences and deductions from historical facts but we must be unanimous in the historical underpinnings of our country.

“The arguments we are making here is bigger than the NPP and the history shows in Danquah’s speech”.

He said academicians, chiefs and politicians conceived the Ghana that Danquah and his cohorts dreamt about in Saltpond and it was not only about Danquah.

According to him, history of Ghana described “the day August 4 in Saltpond where a congregation of all the stakeholders of our body politics or society that conceived the Ghana of today, not the Ghana of one party state or adhere to the rule of law.”

Source: Ghana | Myjoyonline.com,