Gold Coast nationalist reaction to the controversy over higher education in Anglophone West Africa and its impact on decision making in the colonial office, 1945-47, The

Journal of Negro Education, The, Spring 1997 by Charles Peter Emudong

Despite this growing opposition, Arthur Creech-Jones, by then Parliamentary UnderSecretary, strongly and convincingly defended his Minority Report proposals. He warned that adopting the Majority Report would entail "discarding the experienced judgment of the commissioners" and hence plunging "into a position that involves no real solution of Higher Educational problems in the Gold Coast or West Africa" (CO, 1946a, unnumbered page). Yet, as the CO began to heed this warning, local nationalist pressures in the Gold Coast for immediate approval of the Majority Report mounted and coalesced to produce a political situation analogous to that inspired by the Gold Coast Youth Conference of 1943. For example, in one of the no less than eight memoranda to the colonial governor on the issue, Chief Nana Darku IX of the Gold Coast declared that he had received

. . a clear mandate from the chiefs and people to secure an uninterrupted and immediate development of Achimota ... [who had] now reached the stage of representative government [in their] march toward responsible government . . . [and, therefore] the Gold Coast must have a University in its midst so as to make possible vigorous intellectual leadership. (CO, 1946b, unnumbered page)

Further, after reminding the governor that the newly promulgated constitution in the Gold Coast provided an unofficial African majority in the legislature, Chief Darku argued that he would "regard it as a grave dereliction of duty if the first act of the new legislature was to vote expenditure on projects which we the chiefs and the people of the Gold Coast consider to be against our best interests" (CO, undated).

The supervisor of the Presbyterian schools in the Gold Coast added his voice to the controversy by simply warning that if the recommendations of the Minority Report were imposed in the country, the government would lose the existing goodwill of the people and the "country as a whole would relapse into sullen opposition to government on every subject" (CO, 1946d, unnumbered page). As the Chief Secretary to the West African Council stated, "I am afraid any decision for the Minority Report, however much wrapt up, will be violently resisted in the Gold Coast" (CO, 1946, unnumbered page). A. J. Dawe of the CO also noted this development with much concern, claiming, "I regret the way opinion has run against the Minority recommendations" and adding that "the whole business contained an interesting political lesson" for the British (CO, 1946d, unnumbered page). Dawe told Creech-Jones bluntly that although his Minority Report was administratively preferable, the Secretary of State had to decide whether it was wise to impose a policy that, however sound, ran against powerful political forces. He, therefore, wondered if it was not possible that, "with the growing local patriotism of the Gold Coast and its rivalry with Nigeria, which will soon find a means of political expression in the new constitution, it will eventually be found that any unitary scheme. . . we attempt to impose on paper from Downing Street will be wrecked" (CO, 1946e, unnumbered page).