The come-back kid is kicking. Some of the wild blows he is throwing could have dire consequences on himself and the body politic. We are all warned! I have just learned that former President John Dramani Mahama has taken his fight to regain the right of residence at Jubilee House, after his disastrous election defeat of December 2016, to the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police Service.
According to various publications in the Ghanaian media, John 3:16 and its Onaapo version are requiring the Ghana Police Service to drag Mr. Kwame Baffoe, alias Abronye DC, the maverick Chairman of the Bono Region New Patriotic Party, to the station to probe a very serious allegation he might have made.
Suddenly, everybody is talking again about the circumstances leading to the death of Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, the only head of state in the Republic of Ghana who died in office. My great disappointment is that the leader of the National Democratic Congress, who is working hard to write his name in gold as the only former head of state to return to office, does not believe in clearing his name on the many allegations of lack of candour by the administration he led from the front. The leader of the NDC cannot play the ostrich, I am afraid.
Read former President Mahama’s lips via his lawyers: “Regarding the rather irreverent and despicable allegation that (he) Mahama killed the late President John Evans Atta Mills, (he) Mahama would not dignify it with any answer, except to say that the allegation could only come from an unhinged mind,” according to a letter signed by the former President’s lead counsel, Tony Lither of Lither Brew Company Limited.
I am shocked that the man who is scheming to come back to Government House should believe that the circumstances leading to the death of Professor J.E.A. Mills is of no consequence to the body politic.
It is my intention to draw the former head of state’s attention to the relevance of the circumstances leading to the former President’s death, and the need for Mr. Mahama to explain himself to the good people of Ghana.
Mr. John Dramai Mahama, as President and immediate benefactor of Prof. Mills’ death, has a duty to himself and the good people of Ghana to explain the sordid manner of the official handling of the former President’s death, and the many un-explained plots and sub-plots.
To begin with, let me be very blunt here. Every Ghanaian knew that the former head of state was gravely ill and unfit to occupy the most important political office in this land of our birth at the time he was made to swear the oath to lead from the front. Somehow, officials of the National Democratic Congress, in which bosom propaganda still rules, insisted that the good old law professor was as fit as a fiddle.
Long before the election of Prof. Mills in December 2008, via a run-off on December 28, questions were raised about the law professor’s ability to carry the mantle of leadership in such turbulent times. On two occasions at least, rumours did the rounds the Prof. Mills had died.
As a matter of fact, the ascension of Prof. Mills to the highest office of the land was orchestrated by one of the greatest political fraud on the people of Ghana. Not many Ghanaians would have raked their memory to understand why he died, if the NDC in government had not orchestrated another classic mischief on the people of Ghana.
Prof. Mills had remained gravely ill throughout his administration. On one occasion, that was on his arrival at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra, in April 2012, on his return from his last trip abroad to the United States, the former head of state looked terribly ill. He was speaking from his nostrils.
Yet, officials of the NDC administration asked Prof. Mills to trot at the airport as a sign of fitness. It was one of the political party in power’s great deception plans. The outside world never saw the professor in person again.
By the time then Chief of Staff John Martey-Newman announced his death to a bewildered nation at lunch time on Tuesday, July 24, snippets of the late President’s last day on earth were public knowledge.
“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the sudden and untimely death of the President of the Republic of Ghana,” the Chief of Staff at the Castle said in an official statement.
We were further told that the President had suddenly been taken ill after meeting a sister in the morning. There was no ambulance to take the gravely ill President to the 37 Military Hospital in Accra, we were told. There was no police escort to clear the way off mid-day commuters either.
In one of the greatest comedies of our time, we were told that those who took the gravely ill head of state to the Military Hospital first turned up at the Maternity Ward. At the delivery section of the hospital, the security detail, which took the ailing head of state there, reportedly told a doctor that a senior official of government was not well. They either failed to identify the head of state, or deliberately kept his identity from the medical officers.
Some of us were to learn later that one inquisitive doctor took a look at what looked like a corpse at the back of a pick-up vehicle, before re-directing those who took the late president to hospital, to make a detour to the Emergency Ward.
In case Mr. Mahama is unaware, the interpretation a number of Ghanaians are giving to this shabby treatment of Prof. Mills on his last day on this earth is that the Castle authorities knew that the former head of state died at Government House before state officials orchestrated the charade of attempting to seek medical attention for him.
We are told further that the late head of state was buried without an autopsy. There was no death certificate either. Many Ghanaians believe that the ostentatious burial programme at Asomdwee Park, near Castle, was deliberately orchestrated to hide the truth behind the sudden demise of the former President from the people of Ghana.
The grand scheme of deception orchestrated at the burial ground told the story of something that was not right. For instance, one television station even showed the ghost of the late head of state sitting at the right side of our Lord Jesus Christ in heaven.
The first signs of something not very well with the professor’s death emerged when a member of the immediate family from Ekumfi Otuam alleged that blood was oozing from the nose of the dead head of state when the body was laid in state at the State Banquet Hall.
In what many people suspect as part of the grand scheme to cover up, Professor J.E.A. Mills’ brother, Dr. Cadman Mills, who had acted as the deceased President’s economic advisor, was shipped to Washington as Ghana Ambassador to the United States. The junior of the three brothers -Samual- contested and won the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo parliamentary seat on the ticket of the NDC, and now sits in Parliament.
As part of measures to appease followers of the former President in the Central Region, the government of John Dramani Mahama announced the intention to go ahead with the former head of state’s pep library project at Cape Coast. The 10-kilometre road linking the Accra-Cape Coast road at Essuehyia Junction was also given on contract.
Sad to state, the two projects have never seen an end to their construction eight years after the demise of the former law lecturer. Now, serious questions are being raised from family sources about the circumstances leading to the only native from the Central Region to rise to become the head of state of the Republic of Ghana.
The maternal family of the late head of state says its members would welcome any investigation into the professor’s death. “We won’t mind if the new government probes what actually caused the death of our brother, the President. We don’t mind if they do that, so that everything will be clarified,” Mr. Ato Harry-Brew, 85-year old first cousin of the late President, told an Accra daily newspaper.
“If the opinion of the country is that it should be done, then it should be done,” he said from his Ashongman Estate house in Accra. “I feel once there is a new government, we should all, especially the family, get to know the circumstances surrounding his death, if that is what a lot of Ghanaians want.”
It is a view which is surprisingly being echoed by his brother, Dr. Cadman Mills. In a radio interview he granted Starr FM, Dr. Cadman Mills said his brother was not treated fairly by his NDC handlers at the Presidency in his last moments.
He said anytime he (Cadman) returned from his trips abroad in those days, he saw that his brother, the president, was all on his own at the Castle. “I would come back and I would realise that he was a very lonely man… extremely lonely. Oh my God, I would go to his quarters at the Castle, which were basically not fit for human beings to live in. I mean, my God, and he would be sitting in this chair quietly.”
There are too many nuances for Mr. John Dramani Mahama, the man who benefitted the most from the former President’s death, not to explain himself and the conduct of his entire administration. Mr. Mahama owes it a duty to be candid with the circumstances leading to the law professor’s death.
It is not child’s play, as the former Bole Bamboi landlord would want to dismiss it. I am afraid, I, as a fellow Ekumfi man and one the former President’s confidants, will never keep quiet until the truth has been established.
It is my intention to return to this topic on July 24, 2020, the eighth anniversary of Professor J.E.A. Mills’ death. On that occasion, all gloves will be off.
I shall return!
The post Ebo Quansah in Accra: Mahama has a lot to say on Mills’ death appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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