The Vice-President, Mr. John Dramani  Mahama, has defended the government’s decision to eulogize the founder of the country, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, and rejected the criticisms against the embossment of his effigy on the new GH¢2 note.

Speaking at the function at the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park in Accra to mark the 38th anniversary of the death of Dr. Nkrumah, Mr. Mahama described the criticism as a deliberate scheme to downplay the late President’s critical role in the nation’s independence, as well as in the emancipation of Africa.
He said that those who criticize the immortalization of Nkrumah had either forgotten or were being mischievous.

Dr. Nkrumah died in exile in Conakry, Guinea, on April 27, 1972, after his overthrow in a February 24, 1966 military coup. The occasion was part of a month-long programme lined up by the Kwame Nkrumah Centenary Planning Committee to mark the day.

“In his life with all the punitive laws they passed they were unable to destroy his legacy. They never succeeded 38 years after his death and I say emphatically they shall never succeed,” he stressed.
He said the two Ghana cedi note has been issued to mark the centenary of his birth and it was the least of what the nation could do to honour the memory of “this great African”.

The Vice- President said the compromise that allowed the return of Dr. Nkrumah’s body to the country in 1972 and his eventual burial at Nkroful fulfilled his great desire to be buried in Ghana.
He also lauded the decision of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) led by its chairman, Flt Lt Rawlings, to move and burry Dr. Nkrumah’s body at the Old Polo Ground, and creates the Nkrumah Memorial Park, as representing a mark of Nkrumah’s stature in Ghanaian history and his importance to all African people.