Retired Public Works Department staff member Lawrence Frederick Asiamah Tenkorang has described some of Kwame Nkrumah’s decisions after Ghana’s independence as major blunders that contributed to the country’s current difficulties.
Tenkorang said Nkrumah inherited a functioning administrative system at independence in 1957 but made decisions that, in his view, disrupted it.
“He committed some blunders, and that’s why Ghana is suffering now,” he said in an interview with media personality Kafui Dey.
Asked specifically what Nkrumah did wrong, Tenkorang pointed to the decision to retire Western administrators who had been involved in running the country before independence.
He said Ghana had been under their administration for 113 years, from 1844 to 1957, giving them extensive experience in managing the country.
“The Western people had administered the country for 113 years, from 1844 to 1957. So, they had 113 years of administrative experience,” he said.
Tenkorang said Nkrumah’s approach changed after independence when he questioned why he should continue working with the Western administrators.
“Then, one day, he announced that he had gotten independence, so why should he be seeing the whites? He retired them all. He collapsed the administration,” he said.
He argued that the problem was not simply that the administrators were Westerners, but that Ghana lost the experience they had accumulated over decades.
“The country was being administered beautifully, and they handed over power to him, Kwame Nkrumah,” he said.
