Page 79 - Afrika Must Unite

64 AFRICA MUST UNITE
new state. This was a most dangerous situation and a limitation
upon our power as a fully independent Government that we
could not accept. It would have amounted to the exclusion of
Ashanti from the sphere of G hana’s sovereignty. It was un­
thinkable we should lay ourselves open to this possibility and so
endanger the future of the country.
Observing the provisions of the constitution, which set out that
Regional Assemblies ‘shall be established by act of Parliament in
and for each Region’, I named a commission of inquiry to
examine the means by which they should be set up and the most
efficient methods for their conduct. The commission took some
time making its considerations and reporting back, and mean­
time we proceeded in Parliament with other, more urgent
matters. Among these, regional needs were well to the forefront,
and I am certain that the development schemes we have
introduced so far in each of the Regions go far beyond anything
that would have been accomplished if left solely to local
initiative.
Old-established democracies are equipped for wide de­
centralization. They possess skilled and experienced local bodies
to carry out urgent development tasks that would otherwise be
the concern of the central Government. A new country, where
there is strong national but limited local leadership and vigour,
cannot afford to gamble on the ability or incompetence of a
regional body to develop its Region. A new country needs to
initiate central nation-wide planning fitting the required
activities of each Region into the over-all programme. It cannot
allow the programme to be held up by a dilatory or backward or
obstructive Regional Assembly. Provision must naturally be
made for local authorities with powers to carry out local develop­
m ent projects in co-operation with or under the guidance of the
central Government. We suggested this to the British during our
constitutional negotiations, but they insisted on the creation of
Regional Assemblies with powers wide enough to impinge on
those of the central Government, and with tight safeguards
making modification virtually impossible. The only thing they
failed to do was to include a date by which the Assemblies were
to be established, and this was the loophole that we used to allay
the tensions in the country and prepare the ground for the