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Kweku Baako Jnr has described as an exaggeration a recent comment by President Akufo-Addo on the contribution of Dr J. B. Danquah to the establishment of the University of Ghana.

The managing Editor of the New Crusading Guide newspaper during a panel discussion on Joy FM's newsfile programme, Saturday, said: “The president virtually made Dr J.B. Danquah more or less the founder of the University of Ghana, Legon. That’s what we heard but that’s contestable based on other records. Even those records still mention a role J. B. Danquah played".

According to him, "it’s not a question of absolute exclusion of the role or contribution of Dr J. B Danquah. It’s a question of what the President said [which] amounts to exaggeration of the role of J.B. Danquah. When you exaggerate a truth, the essence of the truth is destroyed or undermined. “J. B. Danquah from all the accounts that I have read including what is on the University of Ghana’s website, if you put all together, bottom line, I think what the president said amounted to an exaggeration and an exaggeration that if you are not careful destroys that truth of a certain role played by Dr J. B. Danquah” 

Background

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the launch of the University of Ghana endowment fund stated that his uncle, Joseph Kwame Kyeretwie Boakye Danquah, who was a pan-Africanist and a member of the big six, is the founder of Ghana’s premier university, the University of Ghana.

According to the President, through the inspired vision of JB Danquah, Ghanaians were able to reject the original decision of the colonial government of establishing a single university in Ibadan in Nigeria for British West Africa in getting to agree to establish a separate university for Ghana.

“How felicitous was that decision and how greatly it has contributed to the growth of modern Ghana, it will be wholly appropriate and not at all far-fetched to describe Joseph Boakye Danquah as the founder of this University. The fact which on the 70th anniversary of the university's existence should be vividly recalled that all of us are the beneficiaries of his work.”

The endowment fund which is in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the University of Ghana is to provide additional non-restricted funding to enable the university to improve the delivery of her mandate.