Interaction with Prof. Mills Ghost

Demised President Prof. Mills

“They (NPP) too will mourn someone”, was the words that came out of a Taxi driver who ploughs the Spintex Road while I had boarded the cab to Eighteen (18) Junction on Friday, 16 November, 2012 in front of the Accra Mall.

I melted inside as I awaited my empathy emotions to surge to the fore.

Within a space of a month we have lost a sitting President first in the history of this small country with leadership crisis and just on the same faithful day that the Cab driver showed his inhumanness we lost a former Vice President of the Republic of Ghana.

It’s not a sheer naivety to state that some party faithful’s of the largest party in the country – the New Patriotic Party (NPP) shared some glasses of “pure” wine when they heard of the death of President Professor John Evans Attah-Mills of the National Democratic Congress party (a man who had had his fair share of the problems that comes with leading a small but noisy nation like ours).

I may not have had the privileged of getting close to him but I have had rare opportunities of being hypercritical of his regime and the opportunism of his faithful’s who capitalized on his worsening health conditions to plunder the country of millions of billions of Ghana Cedis. And yes we know there were times his indecisiveness had caused our nation to lose over billions of Ghana Cedis to Judgment Debts. 

I know Prof. John Evans Mills prior to the 2008 General Election of Ghana was somehow radical but I can recollect with clarity that he had some calmness around him as the nation’s Commander-In-Chief of the Ghana Army. I cannot explain his sudden transition from radicalism to calmness however, had Prof. Mills lived to complete his tenure of office, and were I to ask him onequestion; it would be that, “explain to Ghanaians how you smoothly transitioned from a radical leader in the pre-2008 General Election to a very calm and collective leader post-2008 Election?”

Can you guess his answer?

Probably, the magnitude and the mountainous challenges that we face as a nation that is noisy and ungrateful of its leaders could give us a clue. There are stomachs to be filled; thirst to quench; poverty to fix; injustice everywhere; opposition parties who use their status to sow seeds of discord and gloom with whatever (I do) in the country. I believe he was humble by the things to be fixed in the country. There’s the issue of indiscipline in the security operatives in the country. The Bureau of National Investigation has become a “marauding beast” scaring away innocent citizens instead of protecting them from economic wreckers. 

So as I sat in the Cab on our way to Spintex Road, I remember all the people who had predicted Prof. Mills would die the moment he was declared President; those who had prayed that his death should usher in the Presidency of Mr. Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo-Addo; those Ghanaians who shared tears on hearing of the death of the Commander-In-Chief of the nation’s army (Prof. Mills); and the Taxi driver above; I get a better understanding of the country I was born into.

This is a noisy nation; a nation of people scared of the truth; a nation that has enjoyed lies for so long a time that everything that is a lie had metamorphose into the truth in the conscience of even the elite class; a nation filled with an elite who enjoyed parochialism and shallowness; a nation with a hungering youths; and a nation with no clear picture of what its future would look like.

I feel President Prof. Mills had fixed just a little of the problems we face as a nation. The greatest challenge lies ahead of us as we prepared for the December 7, 2012 polls.

Our sympathy goes to the immediate family of His Excellency Aliu Mahama (former Vice President of the Republic of Ghana under President John Agyekum Kuffuor 2001 – 2008). We appreciate your contribution to the forward march of our motherland. May you have a good resting place in eternity.