Akufo-Addo to address maiden liberty lectures at Alisa Hotel

The Danquah Institute has set August 4 as the day to hold its annual Liberty Lectures. The person to deliver the first of the Liberty Lectures this year is Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, a renowned human rights activist, freedom fighter, the Attorney General who repealed the obnoxious Criminal Libel Law and the 2012 Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, a party which traces its ideological roots to Dr Danquah and the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC).

However, because of other commitments of this year’s main speaker, who is presently in South Africa for a similar assignment, the event will be held on Thursday, August 18, 2011, at the Alisa Hotel, Ridge, Accra.

The day, August 4th has been chosen for the Liberty Lectures for symbolic, historical significance. If there is a date that merits the unequivocal acceptance of all Ghanaians as a seminal date in our national history other than 6th March, it should be 4th August.

It was on that date in 1897 when John Mensah Sarbah, the first Ghanaian lawyer, Joseph Casely-Hayford, the renowned author, lawyer and Pan-Africanist, and others met in Cape Coast to establish the Aborigines Rights Protection Society (ARPS). This is the body that waged a brilliant, successful campaign to keep control of our lands in the hands of their traditional custodians, the chiefs, defeating the Colonial Crown Lands Bill of 1897that sought to sequestrate our lands to the British Sovereign in the same way as occurred in East and Southern Africa. Together with the mosquito, the ARPS spared us the fate that continues to bedevil the lives of our brethren in East and Southern Africa, where minority colonial settler communities control to the exclusion of the majority indigenous peoples the most arable lands.

Again, it was on that same fateful day, exactly 50 years later, in 1947, that Ghanaian patriots met in Saltpond to found the UGCC and launch the movement for national freedom and independence. The CPP, which eventually led the nation to freedom, came out of the UGCC – indeed, Kwame Nkrumah was careful to maintain the link with the Convention by appropriating the word “Convention” to the name of the new party. It should be possible then for all to find our common ancestry in the events of 4th August, which set the stage formally for the liberty of the Ghanaian.

A subsequent press release will give more details of the maiden Liberty Lectures to be held on August 18, at 5pm. For further information email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites

 

Comments

Add New Search

Write comment
Name:
Email:	do not notifynotify
Website:
Title:
Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 4.0 beta1

!joomlacomment 4.0 Copyright (C) 2009 Compojoom.com . All rights reserved."