The Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr, has provided details about how the leaders who staged the 1966 coup in the country squandered its resources to the detriment of the nation.
Speaking on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana, Pratt detailed how the Nkrumah government, prior to its overthrow, had acquired equipment for the nation, specifically for the agriculture sector, to facilitate its transformation.
However, this equipment was sold to leaders in the USA by the new military leaders who overthrew the government.
According to him, the equipment brought in by the Nkrumah government was intended to use radiation to aid crop growth. He explained that if successfully implemented, it would have helped curb post-harvest losses of crops in the country.
“Today, if you look at agriculture, most of our crops suffer 30 percent post-harvest losses. This could easily have been cured using radiation. The equipment that was brought in to enable our scientists to use radiation to minimize post-harvest losses were packaged and sold to the United States of America by these reckless persons who staged the 1966 coup and you want us to honor them?” he emphasized.
Kwesi Pratt, a veteran journalist, expressed his strong dislike of the frontrunners of the 1966 coup. He stated that the coup resulted in the abandonment of several projects that could have set Ghana on the development path.
Pratt was speaking in the context of debates calling for the renaming of Kotoka International Airport.
MAG/EK
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