• Hackman Owusu-Agyeman has been narrating how he suffered under Kwame Nkrumah
• He stated that he was imprisoned without trial
• He said, he cannot be singing the praises of Osagyefo due to what he went through
Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s Preventive Detention Act (PDA) which was passed in 1958, gave him [Nkrumah] the power to arrest and detain certain individuals for up to five years without trial.
This act was seen by Kwame Nkrumah’s opponents as a flagrant restriction of individual freedom and human rights and the then CPP under the leadership of Osagyefo, used the powers under PDA to silence its opponents and those who disagreed with his kind of governance.
Under the PDA, Dr. J.B. Danquah, a leading member of the UGCC, was detained until he died in prison in 1965. Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia, leader of the opposition United Party (UP) in 1957, went into exile in London to escape detention.
Hackman Owusu-Agyeman, a leading of the governing NPP, also suffered in the hands of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah during his days as a student leader.
Narrating his ordeal during Kwame Nkrumah’s era to Citi TV in an interview monitored by GhanaWeb, the Chairman of NPP Council of Elders indicated that due to some experiences he and his colleagues went through in the hands of Dr Nkrumah, he cannot be so enthusiastic to praise him.
He explained that, as an executive of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS), Kwame Nkrumah haunted and detained him and his colleagues over protests against his [Nkrumah] authoritarian rule.
Owusu-Agyeman indicated that at the time his colleagues were arrested and sent to Nsawam Prisons, he was on the ran and had to take over as the NUGS General Secretary.
“We the students got up and said no, this is not right, and then they started arresting us.
“I took over as General-Secretary of NUGS and in the night we will drive from Kumasi to Cape Coast. Eventually, they issued a preventive detention order against me to be arrested and sent to Nsawam Prisons. I ran off and was sleeping on the farm,” Hackman Owusu-Agyeman stated.
“Eventually I was arrested, after about four days. They took me to Ayigya police station instead of being put on the train and sent to Nsawam…afterwards, Dr. R.P Baffoe got me out…
“This is why some of us cannot be overly excited when we talk about Nkrumah,” he remarked.
The former minister of state observed that some of his colleagues who were released came with some physical abnormality, including one who came back with a swollen neck.
Hackman Owusu-Agyeman alleged there were Romanians in the prison whose duties included administering different injections to the detainees.
He said, he is sure the injections affected one of his colleagues who had to withdraw from school after spending two years in prison.
“They gave them injections, and it distorted them… They were tortured,” he stated, adding that despite the many applauds Kwame Nkrumah receives for things he did in the country while a head of state, there are many unpleasant actions he took that many will be “amazed” should all those accounts be given.
“It is just by the grace of God that some of us survived,” Hackman Owusu-Agyeman stressed.