To many discerning adults, the recent African Union meeting in Accra (1st – 3rd July 2007) was a sullen splendour of sadness and another opportunity gone.The absence of Nkrumah’s glow of conviction and earthy confidence was so conspicuous that to not have missed his presence was like missing the giant in the room.

The patriarch’s magnificent persistence, energy and consistency were lost to the meeting. Lacking the rallying focus, and bereft of inspiration, the participants flurried about the conference centre, isolated and individualistic like orphans without the heroic father-figure.

When a massive personality exists the scene things are never quite the same. The gaping vacuum on the African front did not just happen. The lack of “a governing consensus” or “a vital centre” in African affairs today revealed more about the present leaders themselves than the ostensible neo-colonialists who did not suffer the follies of the inept.

Remember, the first conference of independent African states was held in Accra under Nkrumah’s instinct way back in 1958, just a year after Ghana’s independence. Geniuses build up visions into stairwells so that the average person could scale the top, and excel there. Though these are big times with bigger possibilities, perhaps the men on the stage are not “heavy”.

How a lush continent with such great potential insisted on being poor and marginalized defied reason. Gone were the days when posts and telephone calls were rerouted through Europe. Today advancements in technological applications in education, communications, transport and management could bind Africa closer than ever in all spheres, and profit all Africans through sheer economies of scale.

But the substance and the will are the missing links. That is the rub. Where presidential mansions were lacy and cozy, it was easy for the occupants to be hazy and forget those at the bottom, namely, the African masses Nkrumah lived and died for.

The life of Nkrumah is modern Africa’s history. He was the battle hardened mover and shaker and cornerstone on which the continent’s future depended. African and Pan-African issues were his issues. No matter what lightnings flashed, he knew exactly where he stood with every thunder that jolted any part of the continent.

You would not think that he came from a small, poor village, Nkroful. Universal as his attraction has been, he is best understood and prized through particulars, and they are too many to recount.

Be they Algerian nationalism, the French government’s testing of the atomic bomb in the Sahara, the pawning of Africa in the East – West cold wars, apartheid in South Africa, support for the frontline states (Namibia, Mozambique, Angola, etc), Patrice Lumumba’s murder during the Katanga impasse in the Congo, the (North and South) Rhodesian debacles, support for African freedom fighters, the African union, the Ghana Guinea-Mali coalition, civil rights struggles in America, the Non-Aligned Movement: one man stood astride the cross fires, undaunted, steadfast, without a stagger, without fear.

Every bone in his body radiated a contempt for the absurd principle which asserted the superiority of the European and hence the nerve to hold the African in bondage. His heart filled with an equal measure of disgust for the acquiescing local elites that fanned this oddity.