When assassins tried to kill Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah with a bomb in the border village of Kulungugu last month, they almost got their man. Though it was officially denied that he had been hurt, Osagyefo (Redeemer) was wounded in the right shoulder, spent a week in the hospital wrestling with a high fever and an even nastier set of suspicions.
Last week Strongman Nkrumah was well enough to take his revenge. Out of office and into jail went three of Nkrumah's closest cronies: Foreign Minister Ako Adjei, Information Minister Tawia Adamafio, and Nkrumah's Party Boss H. H. Cofie-Crabbe.
The arrests seemed to contradict Nkrumah's original pronouncement that "foreign agents" had plotted his death. Nonetheless, Nkrumah's tame Ghanaian Times reported breathlessly that the "vile trio" had in one fell swoop tried to "ride the wave of the people's patience, throw dust into the eyes of the nation, trample over the leaders' forbearance, and disrupt the cause of the revolution." Thundered Nkrumah's Evening News: "The villains have been unmasked in the persons of the arch-Judas Adamafio, the lean and lanky
Cassius, Ako Adjei, and the ideologically bankrupt, potbellied Cofie-Crabbe."
To many Ghanaians, the accusations had a hollow ring. Foreign Minister Adjei, 47, has been a staunch supporter of Nkrumah for years and is a leader of the moderate fringe, which occasionally has urged sense on Ghana's erratic leader. By contrast, Adamafio, 40, is a ruthless opportunist who clawed his way to the top on the strength of his anti-West, pro-Communist inclinations. His main public activity was to dream up new, adulatory names for Nkrumah; but for weeks, rumors of his plans to overthrow the Redeemer had swirled through Accra.
With a touch of bravado, the Ghanaian Times invoked on Kwame Nkrumah's behalf the classic plaint: "Save me from my friends; mine enemies I can take care of." This was putting Nkrumah's plight too simply. From the way things were going in Accra, Osagyefo could no longer tell which was which.