A two-day symposium to commemorate the life of Ghana’s first President, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, has ended in Accra with a call on Ghanaians to give due honour and recognition to the works of the late founder of the nation. The symposium which was on the theme "The Life and Times of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah", which brought together Pan-Africanists from Ghana, USA, Britain and elsewhere, deliberated, among others, on the struggles of ordinary people for a just new social and economic order and the fight for freedom and justice and against imperialism. It was organised by the African People’s Platform, an umbrella body of a group of Pan-Africanists, and was part of the Ghana's 50th independence anniversary celebrations. Speaker upon speaker presented to participants the need to fight the rising spate of imperialism that had become the order of the day especially on the African continent whose people had become hewers of wood and drawers of water. A representative from the African Liberation Support Campaign headquartered in the UK, Mr Brian Garvey, who spoke on the Irish liberation struggle, made reference to the conflict in Northern Ireland and said the continued British dominance in that province was a clear case of imperialism especially given Britain’s refusal to grant the province its independence. He said parts of the West still used its dominant resources to trample on the rights of the weak nations and that Africa was not the only continent which was disadvantaged in the hands of its colonial masters. Mr Garvey who was full of praise for Dr Nkrumah, described him as a great leader who was not influenced by the resources of the Western powers to the disadvantage of the African people, adding "Kwame Nkrumah was indeed a great leader." A lecturer at the University of Cape coast, Prof. Ata Britwum, who spoke on the topic "Decolonisation as a Global Challenge", said Africans after winning political power got foreign collaborators for non-existent programmes which often placed Africa at a disadvantaged position. He said decolonisation in Africa was now a social phenomenon which he described as a materialistic conception of history. According to him this comprised two parts, the first being the super structure that involved the world of ideas, social institutions as well as the machinery the state uses to exercise its power and the second being the material base, and that he said involved society drawing its identity from its indigenous resources. Prof. Britwum called on Africans to protect their property that generated wealth for their well-being rather than the phenomenon of working for the already developed West. He said colonisation came about when Ghana lacked private membership of property as a means of production, adding the structure of colonial administration was to manage the means of production with the principal function of giving foreigners the leeway to exploit Ghana’s resources. "The NPP’s belief in the concept of property owning is the party’s endorsement and support for imperialism," he added. He bemoaned the collapse of factories in Ghana including the Komenda sugar factory, the Tema dry dock, Ghana Airways and the Black Star Line which, he said, were built by Kwame Nkrumah within the nine years of his presidency. He accused some United Party (UP) members for facilitating the overthrow of Nkrumah as they were paid by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which masterminded his overthrow. On the way forward, the professor said the time had come for Ghana and Africa at large to build structures where ideas could be shared with a common purpose of fighting the common enemy he called "neo-colonialism." Earlier, the Managing Editor of The Insight newspaper who doubles as the Publicity Chairman of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Mr Kwesi Pratt Jnr, and a lecturer at the Language Centre of the University of Ghana, Dr Gamel Nasser, also papers to the teeming participants. Source: Daily Graphic