Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, a renowned cardiac surgeon, has recognized a lack of transformative leadership in Ghana’s political scene as a major contributor to the country’s problems.
Professor Frimpong-Boateng raised worry on Citi TV’s “The Point of View” with Bernard Avle on the lack of political will and transformative leadership needed to drive Ghana’s growth 66 years after independence.
He identified Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first Prime Minister and President, as the only transformative leader in the nation, adding that the absence of such figures in the years that followed Nkrumah’s presidency contributed to the country’s current problems.
“We haven’t had any transformational leadership since Kwame Nkrumah,” Professor Frimpong-Boateng said, adding “We cannot hide the consequences of corruption, incompetence, and mismanagement, you can hide them but they will appear.
“If after twenty or forty years, we are not making any headway though we haven’t had any civil war, drought, or any natural catastrophe and we are in this state, there must be something wrong and it can only be a lack of transformational leadership.”
Professor Frimpong-Boateng advised current authorities to lessen their country’s dependency on aid from abroad and to look internally for answers to problems.
“We should be able to organise ourselves in such a way that we are able to take care of ourselves. We sometimes need external help but it should not be a permanent feature of our lives.”
“We can overthrow him but don’t destroy some of the things that he did. Nkrumah set up the Academy of Sciences which became the CSIR and other scientific institutions. These institutions Nkrumah set up were going to do things and the NLC came and destroyed everything and cancelled everything,” he further lamented.
