{"id":5533,"date":"2019-06-01T19:25:52","date_gmt":"2019-06-01T19:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/ng\/?p=5533"},"modified":"2019-06-01T19:25:52","modified_gmt":"2019-06-01T19:25:52","slug":"breaking-news-ghana-is-granting-permanent-citizenship-to-over-200-african-americans-caribbeans-residing-in-the-country-president-nana-addo-dankwa-akufo-addo-these-diaspora-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/breaking-news-ghana-is-granting-permanent-citizenship-to-over-200-african-americans-caribbeans-residing-in-the-country-president-nana-addo-dankwa-akufo-addo-these-diaspora-citizens\/","title":{"rendered":"BREAKING NEWS: ‘GHANA is granting Permanent Citizenship to over 200 African-Americans, Caribbeans residing in the country’-President Nana Addo Dankwa AKUFO-ADDO \u2026.These Diaspora Citizens will be honored at Ghana’s Year of Return next month * ‘The celebration is very dear to the President because it had the potential to place Ghana high on the international map’- Akwesi Awua-Ababio, Director of Diasporan Affairs at the Office of the President\/ Chairman of the Year of Return Steering Committee * ‘ 2019 \u2018The Year of Return\u2019, is a celebration of African resilience and to commemorate 400 years since the first Black slave reached the shores of the new world, United States of America * Fact: It is the prerogative of the President to confer citizenship on persons who were not citizens by birth, as enshrined in the Constitution *PANAFEST to highlight the importance of historic ceremony BY KOFI AKEKWU\/DIPLOMATIC EDITOR, WEST AFRICA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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BREAKING NEWS:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘GHANA\nis granting Permanent Citizenship to over 200 African-Americans,\nCaribbeans residing in the country’<\/strong>-President Nana Addo\n Dankwa AKUFO-ADDO<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026.These Diaspora\nCitizens will be honored at Ghana’s Year of Return next month<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

* ‘The celebration\nis very dear to the President because it had the potential to place\nGhana high on the international map’- Akwesi Awua-Ababio, Director\nof Diasporan Affairs at the Office of the President\/ Chairman of the\nYear of Return Steering Committee<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

* ‘ 2019\n\u2018The Year of Return\u2019, is a celebration of African resilience and\nto commemorate 400 years since the first Black slave reached the\nshores of the new world, United States of America<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Fact: It is the\nprerogative\nof the President to confer citizenship on persons who were not\ncitizens by birth, as enshrined in the Constitution\n<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*PANAFEST to highlight the\nimportance of historic ceremony<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY KOFI\nAKEKWU\/DIPLOMATIC EDITOR, WEST AFRICA <\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘GOING BACK TO THE ROOTS’\nas revealed by ace reggae icon, Lucky Dube in one of his iconic\nclassics, the government of Ghana has introduced ‘Year of Return’\naimed at attracting the highest convergence of African-American,\nCaribbean communities to the gold coast. Plans have been concluded by\nPresident of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa AKUFO-ADDO to confer Ghanaian\ncitizenship to over 200 of these Diasporans presently living in the\ncountry. <\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nconferment of citizenship will take place next month July 2019.\nAccording to the the\nDirector of Diasporan Affairs at the Office of the President, Mr\nAkwesi Awua-Ababio, who is also the Chairman of the Year of Return\nSteering Committee, made this known in an interview with the Daily\nGraphic when the leadership of the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) paid\na courtesy call on the Managing Director of the Graphic\nCommunications Group Limited (GCGL), Mr Ato Afful, and other\nmanagement members of the company.


\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\nsimilar conferment took place in 2016 when 34 Diasporans were given\nGhanaian citizenship under the then President John Dramani Mahama.Mr\nAwua-Ababio explained that it was the prerogative of the President to\nconfer citizenship on persons who were not citizens by birth, as\nenshrined in the Constitution. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\nsaid the decision to grant citizenship to the\nAfrican-American-Caribbean community formed part of the celebration\nof the Year of Return.He\nsaid the celebration was very dear to the President because it had\nthe potential to place Ghana high on the international map.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nmeeting was to dialogue and deliberate on how to strengthen the\npartnership between the two bodies to promote the Year of Return and\nsensitise Ghanaians to the celebration.President\nNana Akufo-Addo, in September 2018, declared 2019 \u2018The Year of\nReturn\u2019, a celebration of African resilience and to commemorate 400\nyears since the first Black slave reached the shores of the new\nworld, United States of America. The\ncelebration is also to reach out to the descendants of those Africans\nwho were forcibly removed from their homeland and taken into slavery.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the meeting, the Chief\nExecutive Officer of the GTA, Mr Akwasi Agyeman, indicated that the\ncelebration had been well publicised on the international front,\nattracting a number of Diasporans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, he said, the same\ncould not be said about the publicity of the celebration in the\ncountry, as there had been little publicity to educate the local\npopulace to be abreast of the celebration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the celebration would\nattract more foreigners into the country, he said, more publicity on\nit would convince the business community to align itself with the\nactivities planned for the celebration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Agyeman further indicated\nthat as part of the celebration a number of activities, including\nPANAFEST, had been outlined to take place from next month until the\nend of the year to climax the celebration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To promote the activities and\nposition Ghana well on the international front, he said, the GTA\nneeded to collaborate with the media to broadcast the event to the\npublic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He, therefore, called on the\nGCGL to support the GTA to make the celebration of the Year of Return\na success, as well as promote the tourism industry in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While expressing gratitude to\nthe GCGL for its immense support to the tourism industry, Mr Agyeman\nsaid more needed to be done to enhance the country\u2019s tourism\nsector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Ato Afful, for his part,\nsaid tourism was very critical to the economic development of the\ncountry, considering the revenue it would generate when given the\nneeded attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He expressed the GCGL\u2019s\nreadiness and commitment to support the celebration to make it a\nsuccess but urged the management of GTA to \u201cleave their doors open\u201d\nto allow free flow of information for publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGive\nus the needed information when we come knocking at your door, so that\nwe can work together to drive the audience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Director of News at the\nGCGL, Mrs Mavis Kitcher, said the role of the company was to support\nthe developmental agenda of the government and so such programmes\nfell within that mandate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also underscored the need\nfor information to be forthcoming to ensure that the objective of the\ncooperation was achieved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs Kitcher, however,\nexpressed concern about the high prices of hotels in the country,\nespecially the four and five-Star hotels, saying: \u201cYou are asking\npeople to visit the country but the prices of these hotels are very\nexpensive and need to be looked at.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Director of Marketing of\nthe GCGL, Mr Franklin Sowa, recalled how the company was already\nworking to promote tourism in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said its platforms had the\npotential to draw the audiences needed to participate in the various\nactivities, saying both Graphic Showbiz and The Mirror were already\npromoting the sector in their publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said domestic tourism had a\nlot of potential that could be promoted to generate high returns for\nthe government and added that the GCGL was using its Junior Graphic\nplatform to introduce vacation tours for students to visit the\nvarious tourist sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reacting to the high hotel\nprices, Mr Agyeman said the management of the various hotels were\npaying about 22 different taxes at a go, hence the high prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, he said, the\nauthority was working with Parliament to see how to reduce the tax\nincidence on hotels to drive down prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BREAKING NEWS: ‘GHANA is granting Permanent Citizenship to over 200 African-Americans, Caribbeans residing in the country’-President Nana Addo Dankwa AKUFO-ADDO \u2026.These Diaspora Citizens will be honored at Ghana’s Year of Return next month * ‘The celebration is very dear to the President because it had the potential to place Ghana high on the international map’- […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}