Ghana's Jubilee Celebration - Implications for Nigeria

Ghana's Jubilee Celebrations - implications for Nigeria

The Gold Coast became Ghana from March 6, 1957 not because you could actually pick up gold bars there at sunset as speculated about the Old Mali Empire. That was an ordinary idiomatic expression that means that the Old Mali Empire that incorporated the Empire of Ghana after its conquest in the 14th Century was a vibrant and prosperous place that was very well known in the whole of the Middle East and Europe. The one ruler that made it popular in terms of its endowment of gold was Mansa Musa. There was one particular pilgrimage he undertook to Mecca: he went there with so much gold that it lost its value, only to be restored about twelve years later. And the one man that made nearly every black man want to stand up to reckoned as a Ghanaian anywhere in the world was Kwame Nkrumah. As the modern state of Ghana celebrates her golden jubilee in existence as a modern state, we may want to find out what went wrong with a country that was a shinning star in the African firmament to become a lone star in the penumbra of World affairs, and her gradual rise once more to international respect.