Feature Ghana
Former President Kwame Nkrumah’s only daughter, Samia (pictured below on becoming CPP chairman), is now in pole position to salvage the fortunes of her father’s once great party. Stephen Gyasi Jnr reports.
Samia Nkrumah steps into her father’s shoes
gress (NDC) in 1992. Te current presi- dent, John Atta Mills, is from the CPP rump in the NDC. But the original CPP has suffered greatly, as it has splintered into different smaller parties, leaving the core struggling to find space in Ghana’s political firmament. It has now been re- duced to the third-largest party in the country. It was against this background, of need-
ing to revive itself, that the CPP held its September congress. And on the cusp of midnight on that fateful Saturday, the Electoral Commission – which supervised the poll – declared Samia the winner. She garnered 1,191 votes to secure a re-
chairman of a political party in Ghana, after warding off stiff opposition from three other contestants to steal the show at the Convention People’s Party (CPP) national delegates congress in Accra on 11 September. Her father, Kwame Nkrumah, founded
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the party in 1949 and it went on to domi- nate Ghana’s politics until Nkrumah’s overthrow in a military coup in 1966. Te CPP was banned after the coup, but it resurfaced in another name (People’s National Party) in 1979 and won that year’s elections that put Dr Hilla Limann in power. Since then, the CPP’s fortunes have
greatly waned as more than half of its heavy- weights were poached by former Presi- dent Jerry Rawlings, when he founded his now ruling National Democratic Con-
12 | October 2011 | New African
AMIA CHRISTIANA YABA Nkrumah, daughter of Ghana’s iconic first president, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, made history when she became the first-ever female
sounding victory. She beat both the in- cumbent chairman, Ladi Nylander, and his predecessor Prof Edmund Delle, who had 353 and 332 votes respectively. Te other female candidate, Araba Bentsi-Enchill, got only 10 votes. Born at Aburi in the Eastern Region
on 23 June 1960, Samia is the only CPP member in the current parliament, having won her Jomoro seat at her first attempt in the 2008 elections. She was forced to leave Ghana with her mother and broth- ers after the 1966 coup. She returned with her family in 1975 at the invitation of the then military government headed by Gen Kutu Acheampong and attended Achimota School in Accra. She, however, left the country again
when her mother returned to her native Egypt in the early 1980s. Samia proceeded to London, and completed her studies at the University of London’s School of Ori- ental and African Studies (SOAS), where she obtained a BA in Arabic Studies in 1991, and an MA in 1993. As she delivered her acceptance speech
on 11 September, Samia held the hands of both Nylander and Prof Delle in an apparent imitation of her father’s famous independence eve speech at the Accra Polo Grounds some 54 years ago. She said the party’s single seat in par-
liament “was meaningless unless it was linked up with the total victory of the entire CPP”. She went on to pay tribute to the elders of the party, particularly the executive, and promised that they would be included in all decisions and activities undertaken by her administration. She described the congress as a purely
internal family affair, and as such there “are no winners or losers” – all should close ranks, forget about the past, and forge ahead as a united party ready to win political power. Already, her victory has caused the
resignation from the ruling NDC of her brother, Sekou Nkrumah, who left the CPP about three years ago, citing poor organisation and visionless leadership as his reasons. Although Sekou has not said whether he will rejoin the CPP or remain politically inactive, he has justified his de- cision by saying that his “continuous stay in the NDC will be a stumbling block to my sister’s progress”. Samia devoted her historic triumph to
Ghanaian women, and said: “Today, we have given birth to a new independent- minded Convention People’s Party”. She said the youth of the party and the country in general would be the focus of the CPP’s programmes under her leadership. If blood is indeed thicker than water,
then Ghanaians may not have heard the last of the once-vibrant CPP, as Samia, who is proving to be a chip from an old block, continues to energise the party.
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