This piece is devoted to the memory of a great African revolutionary, Major Boakye Djan. He was one of the key leaders of the Ghanaian June 4, 1979 Revolution. Major Djan passed on August 30, last year, and his remains were interred at the military cemetery at Burma Military Camp in Accra, Ghana on January 25 with full military honours.
I was unable to attend the funeral despite an invitation passed to me through a mutual friend of ours, Ayitomeka Komla Anku, popularly known as Grandfada.
Djan came into fame at a time the Ghanaians were immersed in poverty, and hopelessness, and were a laughing stock in West Africa. Djan and his other ranks, changed the government and the course of history in Ghana in a massive elite purge and brought Flt. Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings to power.
They cleaned the Augean stable, handed over the reins of power to a civilian government led by Hilla Limann, and retired from the military. He moved on to Kings College, University of London, to research ‘Ghana at War in the Second World War’ as a doctoral programme. However, this was truncated following his disagreement with Rawlings over his comeback putsch of 1981.
It was in the United Kingdom that I made the acquaintance of Djan, whom I fondly called Major, his rank in the military. It was during my doctoral research in early 2000. Mr. Taiwo Akinola, a Nigerian resident in the United Kingdom who was a former Chairman of the Campaign for Democracy, UK chapter, introduced me to his acquaintance, and I became a regular visitor in his Hemel Hempstead home that was dotted with books.
Djan, a former journalist with the Ghanaian Times, before he enlisted in the Ghanaian Armed Forces, was a bibliophile. Ghana was part of my case studies. I required his viewpoint on Ghanaian society and politics, being part of the power elite. My research topic was Human Rights Diplomacy and the Democratic Project in West Africa.
He recommended to me with hilarity, William Easterly’s The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics: Economists Adventures and Misadventure in the Tropics, a work that mirrored the dirty games of agency of global governance, namely, IMF and the World Bank, enamoured of by you African leaders.
Djan would explain his role in the June 4, Revolution at the National Reconciliation Commission Public Hearing in Ghana, on November 18, 2003, that he and his colleagues intervened in the governance process in Ghana against anti-constitutional coupists who brought Ghana to its knees economically and politically.
All these he documented in his 2007 book, titled Call to Duty, with a rider, The Enforced Restoration of the Constitution of Ghana, in honour of the former first citizens and principal victims of anti-constitution coups.
I bonded well, and he called me his brother. We exchanged visits in Nigeria and Ghana after he was given amnesty by the government of John Kufuor. He was a pan- Pan-Africanist to the core, very idealistic, he dreamed about the transformation of the continent. Mr. President, please note this, he felt Nigeria could lead the rest of the continent, and emphasised that Nigeria must get it right.
Osahene, to call him by the traditional title he loved so well, that is, the victorious army-commander, was not the first African or rather person, to nudge Nigeria from slumber and take up its leadership role in the Continent and the world. James Robertson, the last colonial Governor-general of Colonial Nigeria who wrote ‘Sovereign Nigeria’ in the African Affairs of 1961, averred that the motive for creating Nigeria was to build a country that would play a noteworthy role in global affairs.
Similarly, the respected South African leader, Nelson Mandela told Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed in an interview in 2007, that “Nigeria stood by us more than any nation, but you let yourselves down and Africa and the black race very badly…The world will not respect Africa until Nigeria earns that respect. The black people of the world need Nigeria to be great as a source of pride and confidence.”
Currently, the burden rests squarely on your shoulders, Mr. President, and you must get it right not through received policies of global imperialism but the application of what works for us. While wishing the departed African warrior rest in peace, let me add a word of prayer: May the leadership in Nigeria and Ghana work for the realisation of Africa of Djan’s dream to the benefit of the living and unborn generation of Africans.
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