Kwame Nkrumah set up his own personal dictatorship in Ghana, instituting a personality cult that reached grotesque proportions. Every day the press extolled his intellectual brilliance, his foresight, his integrity. He assumed grand titles and created an official ideology calling it Nkrumaism. His presence became inescapable: his profile embellished coins, banknotes, postage stamps; framed photographs adorned shops and offices; his birthday became a public holiday. He built around himself a citadel of power, extending his reach to farmers’ organisations, trade unions and the civil service and using emergency powers to imprison critics and opponents. […] He was deemed to be omniscient. In the words of an official portrait published in 1961: ‘Kwame Nkrumah is our father, our teacher, our brother, our friend, indeed our very lives, for without him we would no doubt have existed, but we would not have lived.’

Martin Meredith, The Fortunes of Africa: A 5000-Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavour (2014)