The Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Sir Samuel Esson Jonah, has questioned the limited attention given to Kwame Nkrumah’s philosophical works in Ghana’s educational curriculum.

He described the situation as a national irony, particularly when Nkrumah’s writings continue to be studied in universities outside Ghana.

Delivering the opening address at the 15th Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Lectures on Thursday, Sir Jonah said Ghanaian students could pass through the country’s education system with little knowledge of Nkrumah’s major intellectual contributions.

He cited works including Consciencism, Africa Must Unite and Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism.

“Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, in the departments of African American Studies at American universities, Nkrumah is on the syllabus. He is read, assigned, examined and argued over.”

Sir Jonah noted that Nkrumah was educated at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and said it was ironic that his works could be more consistently encountered in American classrooms than in Ghana.

“The American student meets Nkrumah as a thinker. Too many Ghanaian students meet him only as a statue.”

The UCC Chancellor, who described himself as a “die-hard Nkrumahist,” used the occasion to challenge the university to consider whether Nkrumah’s ideas should feature more prominently in its academic curriculum.

He directed the thought to the Vice-Chancellor and Convocation of UCC, which hosts the memorial lecture series established in honour of Ghana’s first President.

“I do not presume to write the syllabus. I merely observe that we already have the books,” he added.

The Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Lectures were instituted in 1974 and are among the University of Cape Coast’s longest-running academic lecture series.

Over the past five decades, the platform has hosted prominent African scholars and statesmen to reflect on issues relating to Nkrumah’s ideas, Ghana’s development and the wider African experience.