Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson, Chancellor of Pontifical Academy of Sciences & Social Sciences has said that post-Nkrumah governments do not have the development of the nation at hear
Cardinal Appiah Turkson recounted that many years ago when Ghana gained independence, the country was at par with Singapore and India in terns of development, however, Ghana is still lacking after many years.
Speaking in an interview on TV3’s Hot Issues, Sunday, July 13, 2025, he explained that the enthusiasm, inspiration and mindset that Nkrumah had to build Ghana was not carried through by subsequent governments after his death.
“Kwame Nkrumah put Ghana on the map so the concern was developing Ghana. This is not the concern of subsequent governments. So subsequent government came and the thing was not to put Ghana on the map because Ghana was already on the map.
“So, the initial inspiration did not carry through so where did we lose it?” he stated.
According to him, the subsequent governments had assumed that following independence, Ghana had attained that global recognition and development and so did not focus and channel concerns on building the nation rather using the power obtained for personal gains.
He noted that the task of building the nation stalled at some point with subsequent governments getting too pre-occupied with the power they have and what they can gain from it.
Cardinal Turkson believes this could be the reason Ghana is lacking in terms of development and a gap created in comparison with developed countries like Singapore, India etc.
“Most of the subsequent regimes assume that Ghana exists and so sometimes inadvertently what they do is access to coffers, access to power, the exigency is not about building Ghana but assuming that Ghana exists and it’s got whatever, so you acquire a position that gives you access to this and that so that is probably where we created the gap between us and Singapore, India and whatever.
“So, if we talking about reset, we started with them why did we lack behind? If we are resetting, it is like finding the purposive power to take things forward,” he added.
He opined that if the country is looking forward to resetting, then it must “step out of this mental framework of assuming that this is there and this is there and ours is to get what we can get from it”, stating that it doesn’t help the concept of a common good.
“And so that is why I talked about the need to return to virtuous living and virtuous conduct,” he stressed.
