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He spent wildly and badly on crash industrial schemes. Since 1962, he has launched 47 state enterprises that have invaded almost every sector of the economy. All but three of them are deep in the red, and the Kwame Nkrumah Steel Works had to close down after three months because it had used up all of Ghana's scrap iron, its only source of raw material. Government payrolls swelled to an amazing 250,000 people —two-thirds of all salaried workers in Ghana—and corruption was rampant. The wife of one of Nkrumah's Ministers imported a gold-plated bed, and one of his close advisers emptied his private swimming pool to provide storage space for the stream of "gifts" he exacted from local and foreign businessmen.
The $198 million Volta River Project will eventually turn Ghana into West Africa's major producer of electric power and irrigate 6,000 sq. mi. of new farmland. But not for many years will there be customers for all the juice it will generate. All in all, Nkrumah's reckless spending has brought Ghana as close to bankruptcy as any nation can get. Foreign currency reserves were wiped out long ago, and the nation's foreign debt now totals a staggering $1 billion, most of it in short-term loans.
In his obsession for absolute power, Osagyefo banned all opposition parties, passed a series of laws empowering him to jail all suspected enemies indefinitely and without trial, declared Ghana a one-party state with himself as perpetual President. He also outlawed strikes and clamped rigid government control over the press.
Strong Suspicion. All the while, he was proclaiming himself the father of Pan-African nationalism, and grinding out intricately vague political doctrines about "African socialism." It all sound ed splendid enough, and his fellow Africans were impressed at first. Later, when they found his agents bent on overthrowing their regimes, other African leaders lost their enthusiasm for the freedom pioneer. He was strongly suspected of instigating the 1963 assassination of Togo's President Sylvanus Olympic; last year 14 French-speaking states joined together in a formal denunciation of his eternal plotting.
At home, too, he was running into trouble. Shortages of such basic items as soap and matches were felt in every home, and most Ghanaians deeply resented his government's blatant corruption. At least five attempts have been made to assassinate him. Nkrumah's answer was to crack down even further, increase his security guard—and to retreat behind the four walls of his palace. He reportedly took to wearing a bullet-proof vest, nervously kept five bullet-proof Rolls-Royces ready to carry him around Accra, waiting until the last minute to choose the one he would ride in.
By last summer, he suspected everyone of plotting against him. He packed off his Cabinet for three weeks of enforced "self-study" while he attended a Commonwealth conference in Lon don, turned the government over to three hand-picked cronies in his absence. Ever suspicious of his army, he fired its commanders when he heard rumors that they had been "talking against" him, took command of the army himself. Then, three months ago, he announced plans to form a "people's militia," the obvious purpose of which was to neutralize the army if it tried to move against him.