"When I am gone, just like Kwame Nkrumah, people will appreciate."
The report indicates that “When I am gone, just like Kwame Nkrumah, people will appreciate.”
It further notes that kurt Okraku says it with the calmness of a man already looking beyond the noise of the present.
His black flying tie rests across his stomach to the left. His right leg sits neatly across the left. A wry grin follows. Then the nod — the kind that accompanies a statement he appears convinced time will vindicate.
“People will not only appreciate but people will remember the good things that we did for Ghana football.”
There are some comparisons that demand a second look.
Then there are comparisons that demand that we stop, take a breath and ask: Are we really talking about the same scale of achievement?
Kurt Edwin Simeon-Okraku has made one such comparison.
The Ghana Football Association (GFA) president believes that, when his time in office is over, Ghanaians will remember him much as they remember Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah.
Not necessarily because Okraku believes he has become Nkrumah. Rather, because it tells us something about how he views leadership: as a contribution to history whose value may only become apparent after the leader has left the stage.
That part is fair. But history is a merciless accountant.
And when the accounts of Nkrumah and Okraku are placed beside each other, the difference in scale becomes difficult to ignore.
A president can describe his own chapter. He can point to the projects, the numbers, the victories and the reforms. He can explain the circumstances in which decisions were taken.
But he cannot write the verdict. That belongs to time. And time is a particularly unforgiving editor.
Kurt Okraku has every right to believe his administration has done good things for Ghana football.
