HE BLUNDERED: “Kwame Nkrumah Committed Some Blunders That’s Why Ghana is Suffering Now” - 94-year-old Lawrence Tenkorang

At 94, Lawrence Frederick Asiamah Tenkorang has lived long enough to watch Ghana move from the Gold Coast era through independence, coups, political upheavals and generations of new leaders.

But when the conversation turns to Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, his memories are far from nostalgic.

For Mr Tenkorang, Nkrumah’s biggest failure was not his ambition for independence, it was what he believes happened to Ghana’s administration and economy after the colonial rulers left.

“I didn’t like him,” he said of Nkrumah, before quickly adding: “He committed some blunders and that’s why Ghana is suffering now.”

It is a blunt verdict from a man whose own life stretches back to the Gold Coast and who says he witnessed the country’s administration before independence.

Mr Tenkorang argues that Ghana inherited an administrative system that, in his view, was functioning efficiently under British rule, but was dismantled too quickly after independence.

“The Western people, they have administered a country for 113 years,” he said, referring to the period from 1844 to 1957.

According to him, the experience accumulated during those years created a system that was comparatively stable.

“Everything was going on smoothly,” he recalled.

But independence, in his telling, brought a dramatic change.

He believes Nkrumah did not have sufficient experience in running a country’s administration before assuming power.

“He didn’t have any previous administration experience,” Mr Tenkorang argued. “Anything he was going to introduce, he started from day one practicing.”

And that, he believes, was where Ghana’s problems began.

‘ADMINISTRATION DEFICIENCY’

For the 94-year-old, the thread connecting Ghana’s political troubles over the decades is what he calls “administration deficiency.”

“Ghana is passing through so many problems,” he said. “Administration deficiency is killing the country.”

He pointed to Ghana’s history of military interventions as evidence of what he sees as the consequences of poor administration.

“Why has Ghana had a coup in ’66, coup in ’72, ’79, ’81?” Kafui Dey asked.

In his assessment, the political instability that followed independence cannot be separated from the choices made during Nkrumah’s administration.

Mr Tenkorang was particularly critical of Nkrumah’s decision to move Ghana away from the colonial administrative system and his embrace of policies that, in his view, were copied across Africa without sufficient consideration.

He also rejected Nkrumah’s famous assertion that “the black man is capable of managing his own affairs” at least as a measure of whether race should determine a person’s ability to govern.

“I didn’t believe,” he said.

His reasoning was characteristically simple.

“If a black man takes a blade and cuts himself, what is coming out is red. White man cuts himself, it is the same thing, red.”

For him, competence, rather than colour, should determine who is capable of governing.

“Why should colour determine something?” he asked.

‘HE COLLAPSED THE ECONOMIES’

Mr Tenkorang’s criticism became even more direct when asked how he felt about Nkrumah personally.

“I didn’t like him because of how he collapsed the economies,” he said.

He recalled what he believes was Ghana’s stronger economic position before independence, pointing to what he described as a £250 million reserve left at independence.

His argument is that the colonial administration had accumulated reserves and established systems that could have been maintained and developed rather than abandoned.

But his recollection of the colonial period is not an unqualified defence of British rule.

He acknowledged that Ghana’s resources including gold, cocoa and bauxite were taken abroad for the benefit of Britain.

“There was democracy there,” he said of Britain, while noting that Ghana’s resources were being sent to the United Kingdom.

His criticism, therefore, is less about colonialism itself than about what he believes happened after the British handed over power.

He believes Ghana inherited an administrative structure that should have been carefully preserved and improved.

Instead, he argues, the country embarked on a new experiment without enough administrative experience.

A LIFE THAT SAW IT ALL

Mr Tenkorang’s perspective carries the weight of a lifetime.

Born during the Gold Coast era, he witnessed the transition to independence and later worked in the Public Works Department. He also remembers the country’s changing political climate and the effect those changes had on ordinary people.

His life has taken him from the colonial period to the modern Ghanaian state — giving him a front-row seat to the country’s transformation.

Yet he insists that his assessment is not driven by party politics.

“I don’t support any party. I’m independent,” he said.

Then came his guiding principle:

“What is right is what I say. And I’ll give you my reason for saying.”

At 94, Mr Tenkorang is not simply recounting history.

He is offering his verdict on it.

And his verdict on Ghana’s first president is unmistakable: Nkrumah may have delivered independence, but in his view, the administrative choices that followed helped put Ghana on a troubled path from which the country is still struggling to recover.

As he put it: “Administration deficiency is killing the country.”