The statue of Indian’s independence leader Mahatma Gandhi on University of Ghana campus has been torn down.
According to campus-based Univers News, the statue was brought down by “orders from above”.
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Photo: Univers News
Some men in the company of security carried out the demolition Wednesday morning, a reporter with Radio Univers told Joy News.
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“This follows a vicious protest in 2016 for the removal of the statue by some academics of the university who argued that Gandhi was a racist and had no place in the school,” the media outlet of the university reported.
Protests
Few months after the statue which was donated by the Indian government was erected, a group of lecturers and other advocates started a movement to have the statue removed.
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The protestors argued that Gandhi was a racist when he was alive and the premier university of Ghana had no business glorifying him.
A former Director of the Institute of African Studies (IAS), Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo who was a leading member of the protesting group argued Gandhi has spoken ill against Africans when he sought to compare Indians with natives of Africans.
The movement launched an online petition which many people signed in support of calls for the statue to be brought down.
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It is not clear as yet if the university authorities have backed the removal of the statue; all attempts to contact the public affairs of the university have proven futile.