Osman criticized Nkrumah’s party for financing itself through public taxes

Evidence

Our last day in Accra! At 9:00 we went to visit the headquarters of the Convention People’s Party. This party, whose Secretary General is Nkrumah despite being also the head of state, has tentacles everywhere in the life of the country. Since the party is seated in huge buildings in every district of the 9 regions of Ghana, I asked where the party gets its funds to finance such big buildings and its activities. I was told “from the people.” I imagine the government takes the party’s share from the money it collects from the people in the form of taxes. So the party is financed also by the nonmember citizens of the CPP. Poor democracy! We blabber about it only when we struggle to conquer political power in order to get rid of colonialism. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 114

Categorization

• QUESTION: How did Osman’s 1961 Ghana visit observations shape his later constitutional restraint in Somalia?
• XREF: Parallels debates in other postcolonial democracies about ruling-party capture of state resources.