Confirmed: Prez Mills To Be Buried At Flag Staff House

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Created on Tuesday, 31 July 2012 00:00

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Confirmed: Prez Mills To Be Buried At Flag Staff House

{sidebar id=10 align=right}The Funeral Committee has confirmed to the Speaker of Parliament, Mrs. Joyce Bamford-Addo that the late President John Evans Atta Mills will be buried at the Flagstaff House in Accra.

The remains of the former President will be laid to rest near the residence of Ghana's first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah.

The Minister of Communications, Haruna Iddrisu indicated on Saturday that the late President Mills would be buried at the Flagstaff House also known as the Jubilee House.

But the decision on the Flagstaff House as the final resting place for the late President was put on hold after President John Mahama visited the home region and hometown of President Mills to officially inform them of the demise of the President.

The Funeral Committee on Monday visited the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park and Mausoleum, the Military Cemetery, the Castle Marine Drive and the Flagstaff House in a bid to find a suitable ground to develop into a national memorial park to house all Presidents when they die.

President Mills died at the 37 Military Hospital on Tuesday, July 24 after a short illness.

His funeral is scheduled to take place from August 8-10.

Source: citifmonline.com

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Prez Mills' Disposition Always Calmed Me - Prez Mahama

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Created on Sunday, 29 July 2012 00:00

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Prez Mills' Disposition Always Calmed Me - Prez Mahama

{sidebar id=10 align=right}President John Dramani Mahama says he is confident that the tutelage he received from the late President J.E.A. Mills while serving as his vice president is enough to enable him lead the country for the remaining months of the government’s term.

President Mahama made the remarks when he led a government delegation to the home town of the late president to commiserate with his family on his demise.

The president also paid a courtesy call on the paramount chief of Cape Coast before heading to the family house of the late president at Otuam also in the Central Region.

President Mills met his untimely death last Tuesday at about 14:15GMT at the 37 Military Hospital after a short illness.

Addressing a large crowd of mourners and family members, President Mahama said the late president gave him the opportunity to exhibit his leadership skills and always offered him a listening ear.

“He reposed absolute trust in me. Any time there was tribulation and I went to him, he calmed me down and he always said ‘John, I trust you, I like the work you are doing, carry on,’" he narrated.

According to President Mahama, “anytime we had problems in government, sometimes I despaired. Sometimes we had very difficult challenges and his disposition always calmed me.”

Meanwhile the Chief of Staff, Henry Martey Newman, who was also part of the delegation, paid a glowing tribute to the late president saying he was an intellectual man of peace with great leadership skills.

He said President Mills was a “great leader, our mentor, our philosopher, our Christian leader, our friend, our brother, father, our grandfather, our teacher, our professor. I could continue for a long, long time.”

Mr Newman stated that even before the president passed away he was thinking about the country and the last letter he signed attests to his dedication to the country.

Source: Radioxyzonline

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NDC Gas, Ewes, Fantes in big fight over Veep post

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Created on Monday, 30 July 2012 00:00

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NDC Gas, Ewes, Fantes in big fight over Veep post

{sidebar id=10 align=right}There has been simmering tension and uneasy calm within the ranks of the ruling National Democratic Congress in the past few days over the imposition of President John Dramani Mahama as presidential candidate and the President’s indecisiveness in choosing a Vice President and/or running mate.

Information available to the New Statesman reveals that the hurried nature with which President John Mahama was endorsed as NDC flagbearer by the National Executive Committee of the party, last week, was solely for the purposes of preventing some big-wigs in the NDC from contesting.

A source at the NDC party headquarters has hinted the New Statesman that the decision to endorse President Mahama quickly, a decision described by some as a lack of respect for the late President John Atta-Mills, “was to prevent Bagbin, Spio and others from running.”

The source further added that the party hierarchy is of the firm belief that anybody other than President Mahama would be soundly beaten by Nana Akufo-Addo, Presidential Candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party, the more reason President Mahama was imposed on the NDC as its candidate.

This decision by the NDC NEC, according to the source, has infuriated these NDC big-wigs who had been nurturing ambitions of leading the party into an election for some years now, and are now contemplating legal action against the party to ensure the dreams of becoming presidential candidate of the NDC, after the death of President Mills, is not shattered by the imposition of John Mahama.

Meanwhile, the race for the vice presidential slot of the NDC is gathering momentum, with blocs in the party mainly made up of the Fante, Ewe and Ga caucuses gearing up for a showdown to lay claim to this position.

Information reaching the New Statesman indicates that Togbui Afede, Paramount Chief of the Asogli Traditional Council, is mobilizing chiefs to lobby the leadership of the NDC, as well as the President, for the position of the Vice President/Running Mate.

{sidebar id=12 align=right}Described as the Volta caucus, insiders have told the New Statesman that those pushing for the selection of a candidate from the Volta region are fairly convinced that this move will blunt out the possible effects of former President and founder of the NDC, Jerry John Rawlings, convincing residents of the region not to vote for the NDC.

Failure to elect a “Voltarian”, insiders have warned, will result in the NDC losing a huge chunk of votes, largely due to voter apathy and the influence of the Rawlingses persuading voters to cast their votes for any party but the NDC.

Similarly, the Fante caucus within the party, allegedly headed by the Ahwois, “favours a Fante” to compensate the Central Region for the loss of President Mills and also to feed into the greater Akan votes, with Akans said to constitute 47.5% of the population.

With respect to an Akan candidate, members of the Fante caucus are said to favour Victor Smith, current Eastern Regional Minister, and Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, both indigenes from the Eastern Region. Regarding their preferred candidate from the Ashanti region, PV Obeng, according to sources, stands tall.

Ultimately ensuring that the Greater Accra region is not left out of this scramble, the New Statesman has gathered that the Mayor of Accra, Alfred Oko Vanderpuye, is seriously lobbying to become the Vice President of Ghana, likewise ET Mensah, Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing.

“The interest from the AMA boss and ET Mensah is very real. They have approached a number of top shots within the party to ensure President Mahama does not make the mistake of selecting anyone else apart from them,” the source told this paper.

Surprisingly, self-acclaimed director of operations at the Castle, Nii Lantey Vanderpuye, also wants to be named Vice President of the Republic of Ghana and feels his Ga-Adangbe connections will help win the region, described as one of the battle grounds on December 7, for the NDC.

Fiifi Arhin

Source: thesatesmanonline.com

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Mills Last Hours Blow-By-Blow

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Created on Saturday, 28 July 2012 00:00

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Mills Last Hours Blow-By-Blow

Apparently, doctors of President Atta Mills had detected something unusual in him when he went for his famous June 16, 2012 trip to the United States for a routine medical checkup.

This required him to rest extensively to recuperate, but he wouldn’t listen.

The state funeral for the former president will take place in Accra from Wednesday, August 8 to Friday, August 10, 2012. According to a statement issued in Accra yesterday, the funeral service and burial would be on Friday, August 10.

{sidebar id=10 align=right}The statement, signed by Chief of Staff Henry Martey Newman, said further details would be announced later.

Indeed, when President Mills came back from the US, he said his doctors gave him a clean bill of health. He went ahead to tell Ghanaians that he had energy for the “past, present and future.”

Rev. Dr. Nii Amu Darko, a member of the Council of State and a close friend and confidant of President Mills, explained that it was initially arranged for him to take some time off in the presidential lodge at Peduase on the Akwapim Ridge, but he sneaked back to the Osu Castle with the excuse that he was bored on the ridge.

“We persuaded him to go for a rest somewhere, so he moved for a while to Peduase Lodge, and it was from the Peduase Lodge that he inspected the Kumasi-Accra road, and we intended that he would stay and rest for a while. He decided to come home that weekend and come to chapel at the Castle and then go back. Only for him to come to the Castle and decide he wasn’t going back to Peduase because the work was at the Castle,” said Rev. Amu Darko.

When he came down the mountain, his aides arranged for him to make several public appearances to prove to Ghanaians that the president was hale and hearty when it was obvious to them that doctors had given a contrary opinion.

The visibly frail president was whisked to several appointments to inspect and commission projects, including the Accra-Kumasi road project.

On the morning of Tuesday, according to sources, the president, a sportsman, struggled with a light exercise and later had a meeting with his siblings, some of whom had travelled from the Central Region to Accra.

He also called for his wife, former First Lady Naadu Mills, but before she was ferried, the president was no more as he had been rushed to the hospital.

According to a source, arrangements had been made to fly him to Nigeria to see his spiritual adviser, Prophet Temitope Balogun (TB) Joshua of Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos, hence the letter to Speaker of Parliament informing the House of the trip.

The source said that they had wanted Prophet Joshua to travel to Ghana but he rather asked them to bring President Mills, but he could not make the journey before disaster struck.

Encounter At 37 Hospital

In a gripping account of his last moments with the late president, the Baptist minister recounted the last image of the president at the 37 Military Hospital on Tuesday where he was pronounced dead.

He said he dashed to the hospital as soon as he heard about the tragic news; only to find his good friend slumped lifeless in a bed at the hospital.

He said he initially thought the president was in a coma and was being revived by the doctors at the 37 Military Hospital.

When he realised this was not going to happen, he told Joy FM on Wednesday, he exclaimed, “What has happened, has it got to that?”

“It knocked me off my feet,” he wailed.

He said he pleaded with the doctors to allow him in to see the president. “I went there and I saw my president and my friend lying down there, lifeless. I called him [President Mills] four times, but he wouldn’t respond; he usually calls me Doc or Rev, he never calls me by my name,” the castle chaplain said tearfully.

{sidebar id=12 align=right}The news of President Mills’s untimely death devastated the whole country when it broke on Tuesday, July 24, 2012.

Top government officials, politicians and the general public were spotted breaking down amid uncontrollable tears.

Puffy-eyed Central Regional Minister Ama Benyiwa-Doe was captured in an extreme state of grief.

DAILY GUIDE gathered that deputy Information Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa was almost out of control in his wailing.

Nobody expected the president to die so suddenly even though he was widely suspected to be in a critical health condition, allegedly suffering from a terminal disease.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) functionaries would not admit this though, but close associates of the president were certain he was critically ill and needed rest.

Unconfirmed reports stated that he was taken to the hospital in a critical condition, almost dead, with blood oozing from his nose and mouth.

The foreign news wires boldly stated that the president was suffering from malignant throat cancer.

Presidential aides were quite apprehensive of the rumours because according to them, the rumours had no basis, saying the president was in an extremely good health.

Director of Operations at the Castle Nii Lantey Venderpuye, Mr Okudzeto Ablakwa, Director of Communications at the Presidency Koku Anyidoho and a tall list of other government functionaries publicly condemned the news about the president’s ill health.

Former President Jerry Rawlings was unequivocal about the state of health of the President. “It was not unexpected because he’s been battling the cancer for quite a while,” he told a BBC reporter in Congo Brazzaville a day after the demise of President Mills.

“Quite frankly, I think had he (referring to the late president) been advised and done something wiser earlier on, he could probably have survived,” he stated.

“It got too tight. It got extremely tight and the poor professor has passed away.”

TB Joshua Confession

Contrary to what his aides would want Ghanaians to believe, President Mills’s trusted spiritual mentor, Prophet T.B Joshua, was quoted in a Nigerian newspaper a few days after his death that he knew the deceased president was battling with a terminal ailment for a long time, saying the late president was suffering from throat cancer.

According to him, he and his congregation prayed for him all the time. “Of course, I knew he had been ill for some time now and he had come for special prayers concerning his health three times this year and I and my other ministers had prayed fervently for him.

I was so hopeful he would recover his health completely, but it is sad and only God knows best why he should die now,” stated T.B Joshua.

Source: Raphael Adeniran/d-gUIDE

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