He has, therefore, advised the new President of Ghana to select into his team people who believe in radical change.

 He stated that people who believe in radical change  ought to stand for office at every level and take back the levers of power.

According to Mr Smith, Nana Akufo-Addo understood the resentment of Ghanaians against the ruling class and its agenda, which his predecessor did not.

“I further hope that Nana understands that in politics the real test lies in what you do, not what you say,” he explained.

Mr Smith stressed that to really bring about what he termed people’s revolution, Ghanaians needed a far deeper change than they had at the time of Ghana's independence in 1957.

Ghanaians and Africans

“Then we can really start to overturn the orthodoxy that started with such great hope but eventually had disappointed so many Ghanaians and Africans for that matter,” he stated.

 Writing under the title: “Ghana needs a people’s revolution to wrest back power,” he advised President Akufo-Addo to  embrace the people's revolution and not a military revolution.

Mr Smith stated that President Akufo-Addo’s win of the presidential election on December 7, 2016 came as a big surprise to some gullible Ghanaians, as the American elected President Donald Trump.

“This was seen especially in the stupefied reaction of the Ghanaian ruling class who have become out of touch with political reality, and shows how detached they are from the consequences of their own reactions,” he stated.

 Ruling class

 Mr Smith said Nana Akufo-Addo’s victory was a revolt against the ruling class who had benefitted greatly from the toil and sweat of the ordinary, poor Ghanaians.

 According to him, ever since the overthrow of the late Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the rich had been getting richer and the poor poorer.

 He added that it was a fact of life in Ghana today that nearly 70 per cent of Ghanaians were poor or lived below the poverty line.

 Mr Smith said he believed that Ghana needed “a People's Revolution" to change the belief for orientation of the ruling class since the present  political structure’s rules and values were inadequate for such reforms.

Present generation

He stressed that Presiddent Akufo-Addo was the most experienced politician of the present generation to move the country forward.

“I have known him since 1965 when he and the late J. C. Akosah and Abel Edusei visited the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute where I had gone as a student from the Ghana Institute of Journalism.  ·

“Although his late father, Mr Justice Akufo-Addo, belonged to the elite group opposed to Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Nana associated with students whose parents belonged  to the Kwame Nkrumah Party,” he observed.

Mr Smith said with his 40-year political career spent fighting for the oppressed people of Ghana, he believed President Akufo-Addo represented the direct challenge to the status quo that the ordinary Ghanaian was yearning for.

“Ghana needs a whole new set of people who believe in radical change to stand for office at every level and take back the levers of power,” he added.