Demystifying Dr. Nkrumah’s Mysterious Kankan Nyame

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was Ghana’s first president who had a very deep sense of spirituality.

His quest for a United Africa caused him to travel all over Africa and that also meant consolidating his Spirituality.

He formed a West African Solidarity with Guinea and Mali to push the anti-colonial agenda from 1952 to 1972.

In Guinea he was deeply loved and even worshipped.

Nkrumah was introduced to a deity in a town called KANKAN in Guinea.

Kankan is the largest town among the Mande speakers of Guinea.

Nkrumah brought the Kankan goddess to Ghana in 1953 and made a secret shrine for her within the Flagstaff House. 

According to one Prophet Baidoo, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah spiritually enslaved country in bondage when he used a pregnant woman’s blood to make a god that he called Kankan Nyame.

“After Independence, whoever has sat on the throne of the presidency has never had it easy ruling the country.

At the end, Ghanaians lie in difficulties.”

Describing the Kankan Nyame, the prophet said:

“Dr. Nkrumah made a half dead pregnant woman kneel, and tied seven white handkerchiefs around her neck, and hands.

There were some bowls around the pregnant woman containing human blood and human skulls placed in-between the bowls.”

According to him, Nkrumah kept this god at the Flagstaff house and at the castle.

“Some of the human blood was also sent to the Independence Square. The statue at the Independence Square was built with human blood” he reiterated.

He described the star in a hand with the inscription Gye Nyame on the country’s bank notes as juju and could be attributed to the fallen value of the Cedi.

The Man of God further said bloodshed would continue as it happened at the stadium disaster if Ghanaians continue to accept blood as stated in the national song, Yen ara asase ni.

“Some of the juju medicine was also kept in the Peduase Lodge (Nkrumah’s special residence) and at the Osu cemetery.

When invited, I will be able to show and prove where it was buried at the Osu cemetery,” he added. 

Also, according to Dr. Obed Asamoah of the NDC (one of the founding fathers of the NDC party), Nkrumah use to visit the female deity.

The rumour of Kankan Nyame shot up after the overthrow of Dr. Nkrumah in 1966.

Some workers and GIJ students openly demonstrated in Accra holding placards of beguiling insults aimed at the deposed president.

One of the placards had an image of a naked Nkrumah kneeling before a female goddess with 7 handkerchiefs tied to her hands.

Dr. Nkrumah was always seen in public with a white handkerchief too, alluding to a fortification from the deity against any public harm.

Strangely Nkrumah was bombed several times at close range but he was barely harmed.

But Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah has denied these claims in one of his books quoted by Michael Gyamerah on (page 105 of Dark Days In Ghana):

“A particularly nauseating part of the smear campaign was the putting of a dead woman and child into a refrigerator at Flagstaff House, saying that this was ‘Kwame Nkrumah’s juju’, and inviting public inspection.

The woman and child were among those murdered on 24 th February.

But the public turned the open invitation to Flagstaff House into a kind of pilgrimage and the inspection offer had to be quickly withdrawn”.

Dr Kwame Nkrumah in his Autobiography had stated that he was a non denominational Christian and a Marxist socialist.

However, as time went by, his religious ideas altered and he declared himself as a Marxist socialist.

He believed in an impersonal force through which the universe and it’s inhabitants were made.

Dr Kwame Nkrumah said:

”… I also believe that there is a source of all power in the universe. I liken that power to, say, electricity or atomic energy, millions of times more powerful. This is the sustenance of all that there is.”

In his attempt to distinguish between Jesus and Christ, He likened Christ to an impersonal force whereas he likened Jesus to other religious figures such as Mohammed, Buddha, Confiscus, etc. Below is his distinction between Jesus and Christ:

”To me there is a difference between Christ and Jesus. Christ is mystical and impersonal, and Jesus is historical and personal.

The two are not the same thing.

Christian theologians have messed up the world with this confusion.

Jesus is the biological son of Joseph and Mary. He was, however, a wise man in many things like Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Mohammed”

The city of Kankan in Guinea was founded by the Soninke people in the 18th century, after which it became an important trading centre, particularly for kola nuts, and the capital of the Baté Empire.

The population of the city is predominantly from the Mandinka ethnic group and their language is widely spoken throughout the city.

Nkrumah and Sékou Touré

The relationship between Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and Sékou Touré commenced in the early 1950s.

Led by the PDG (Democratic Party of Guinea), the Guinean People cast the famous “no vote” of the 1958 referendum, and refused to become a satellite of France and opted for complete independence from Charles de Gaulle of France.

Guinea being the first African French colony to break ties, was met with the vengeful rage of France.

France, in their departure, took everything they could out of Guinea–from financial capital to even light bulbs, pens and rail lines.

President Nkrumah and his CPP stepped in to save Guinea’s economy with an infusion of 10 million dollars capital to help resuscitate the economy of Guinea.

Nkrumah and Touré would become leaders of Revolutionary Pan-Africanism inside the revolutionary Casablanca group that included Egypt and Mali, led by Presidents Gamal Nasser and Modibo Keita, respectively.

They aided and allowed their territories to be used to train and supply revolutionary forces throughout Africa and the African Diaspora.

They advocated for the immediate establishment of One Unified Socialist Africa.

When Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown by the CIA and counter revolutionary elements in Ghana, it was Sekou Touré, the PDG and Guinean people that made Nkrumah Co-President of the Republic of Guinea.

This revolutionary, Pan-Africanist act allowed Nkrumah to reproduce and revise his Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, the first version having been destroyed (burnt) during the coup d’etat in Ghana.

The friendship between Ghana’s first President, Kwame Nkrumah, and Guinea’s first President, Ahmed Sékou Touré, proved problematic for the United States, and even led to the first U.S. diplomatic hostage situation, years before Iran.

Nkrumah and Touré were both anti-Western presidents of recently independent countries.

Washington, which was glad to see Nkrumah go, had little desire to deal with him when he was in Guinea.

However, the new Ghanaian government then (the military regime) kidnapped the Guinean Foreign Minister and said it would not release him until they got Nkrumah.

On October 29,1966 in an odd counter move, Guinea also detained American diplomats until their Foreign Minister was released.

Somehow this was all resolved peacefully, more or less.

To add a bit more salt to the wound, Touré was less than gracious in his apology to the U.S. Ambassador.

Rumours of Kankan Nyame continues to linger 56 years (and counting) after the overthrow of Dr. Nkrumah.

Our elders say:

“There’s no smoke without fire”

Obviously there’s some truth hidden somewhere in the Kankan Nyame rumours.