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My Father’s Legacy part [9] |
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When the coups Coup d’état on February 24, 1966 struck Nkrumah was in Peking. He immediately cancelled his visit to Hanoi. The Chinese made arrangements for Nkrumah to leave Peking as soon as possible. Message of support arrived for Nkrumah all over the world.
Among African heads of state who expressed their support at this were Sekou Toure of Guinea, Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Milton Obote of Uganda, Modibo Keita of Mali, and the prime minister of Sierra Leone, Albert Margai.
President Sekou Toure in his message invited Nkrumah to go at once to Guinea. Nkrumah decided to accept the invitation from Sekou Toure and people of Guinea. The government of the Soviet Union sent an aircraft to Peking to fetch Nkrumah, and on February 28 he left china. The first stop was Irkutsk in Siberia.
Then on he flew to Moscow where he landed at dawn on the first of March. There he was welcomed by Soviet leaders and it was not until midnight that the aircraft took off for the flight to Guinea. After brief stops in Yugoslavia and Algeria he reached Conakry. It was then after on Wednesday March 2, 1966. Sekou Toure and a large crowd had gathered at the airport to welcome Nkrumah. As he stepped from the plane a 21-gun salute was fired, the greeting reserved for heads of state.
The following day a mass rally was held in the stadium in Conakry. Sekou Toure and Nkrumah were driven round the arena in an open car. The people cheered and waved banners with the words “Long live Nkrumah,” Long live Sekou Toure’, and Down with neo-colonialism.” Nkrumah was happy to be in Guinea. He felt at home as long as he was on African soil. But he was guile unprepared for Sekou Toure’s speech that day.
“The Ghanaian traitors’ Sekou Toure said, “Are mistaken in thinking that Nkrumah is simply a Ghanaian.
He told the crowd that Nkrumah belonged to all the people of Africa.
Nkrumah was deeply moved; he thanked Sekou Toure and the people of Guinea for their welcome and support. And for the next six years Nkrumah lived in a house on the sea-front called Villa Syli, about a mile from the center of Conakry. In the distance to the east he could see the hills of Sierra Leone; in the other direction, the shores of Guinea Bissau.
Foot Note: The traitors struck in February 1966, shortly after the inauguration of the Volta dam just as we were on the point of a break –through in our struggle to achieve economic independence. In doing so, they betrayed not only Ghanaians, but millions of poor and oppressed people in Africa and elsewhere who looked to Ghana for inspiration and leadership.
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Source: Ghanaian Times |
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