President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo
Mr Abraham Osei Aidooh, Former Majority leader and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, has stated that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has become the new voice of African People.
He therefore disagreed with the school of thought that states that the collapse of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has brought an end to Pan African activism.
According to him President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has become the new voice for the African people on the international geopolitical landscape.
“His Excellency gave an appetizer to the world about the new era that he is bringing to Pan-Africanism when he met the French President here,” Mr Aidooh said in an interview in Tema.
“When Emmanuel Macron, President of France, visited Ghana, President Akufo-Addo made it clear to him that the time has come for Europe and the rest of the world to take their hands off Africa.”
“ Africa can no longer continue to make policies for ourselves, our regions and our continents on the basis of whatever the Western world or France or the European Union can give us.
” It has not worked and it will not work” he added: “Our responsibility is to charter a path which is about how we can develop our nations ourselves. It is not right for a country like Ghana – 60 years after independence – to still have its health and education budgets being financed on the basis of the generosity of European tax-payers,” President Akufo-Addo had told the French leader.
The French President’s fidgety disposition was understood by those who knew about France’ continues stranglehold on all former colonies in Africa; including neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire and Togo,
Leaders who have resisted the servitude to France rooted in the so-called Pact Francais, have been brutally uprooted, with former Ivorian President, Laurent Gbagbo, as the latter most casualty.
“The situation between France and its former colonies is totally unacceptable. This colonial arrangement is the reason that we cannot have a common currency, the ECO for West Africa, but none of our leaders has been able to confront France over this issue – until President Akufo-Addo recently did.”
“I think His Excellency’s take on the issue was good enough for the French to see that we are not nitwits in Africa, we know what is going on and we don’t approve of it,” Mr Aidooh said.
He therefore slammed public opinion that had recently emerged claiming that the collapse of the regime of Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, essentially marked an end to Pan African activism because for some years now, only Mugabe had stood up against the dictatorship of the Western colonial metropolis..
Mr Aidooh prophesied that in the coming years, President Akufo-Addo, a respected human rights lawyer and activist, will project the pan African interest even more and be a thorn in the flesh of the Western powers.
The story is told of how Mr Abraham Osei Aidooh had carried the NPP from Accra to Tema, and figuratively, carried the party on his head like a local porter “kayayoo” to hawk it door to door.
Mr Aidooh served as the Majority Leader of Parliament during Former President John Agyekum Kufuor’s regime.
-GNA