Sir Sam Jonah defends Nkrumah’s Preventive Detention Act, says history must be judged in context
The Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Sir Samuel Esson Jonah, has called for a more contextual assessment of Kwame Nkrumah’s constitutional legacy, particularly the controversial Preventive Detention Act. Speaking at the opening of the 15th Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Lectures, Sir Jonah acknowledged that the law remains one of the strongest points of criticism against Ghana’s first President, but said its historical circumstances should also be considered. “The Act was passed in 1958 by a state barely a year old, which had already lived through political bombings and a violent secessionist agitation in Ashanti, and which within months would uncover a plot against the government inside its own army.”