DEATH OF PRESIDENT MILLS-STILL LIKE A NIGHTMARE

I am among the group of folks who heard the heart breaking news that shuttered the tranquility of our nation a little late after the story had broken. Time check was a little after 4pm; about two hours after the old man had passed on. Interestingly, I didn't hear the rumours until the story was confirmed. Location was Nhyiaeso in the Kumasi Metropolis. Specific activity was: browsing in front of a computer with an internet connection that was hardly moving. And then I tried logging onto one of my latter day most favorite local news websites. The internet connection was refusing to give me that luxury of reading the stories on the front page of the news website. It had loaded half page, and all I could read were the rolling tickers. And then, one of the tickers scrolled by. It read: “President Mills is dead.”

A lot of things began running through my mind at the same time; maybe I was reading wrongly, probably, the page that had loaded was not current - maybe from last two months or so when unfounded rumours swelled that President Mills is dead. I suddenly realized I had gotten a little confused. So I turned away from the monitor of the computer, and then I pulled out my phone to rather browse with that. And then I logged onto the news website. There I read that the story was actually breaking news that had just trickled in. President Mills' Chief of Staff had issued a statement confirming the death of the president earlier in the afternoon.

As I read out the story to some folks I was in the room with, I could hardly hold myself together. My voice was trembling - I felt like a non native speaker tripping over difficult phrases; my hands were shaking and the Samsung phone in my palm was suddenly getting wet. It was as if the phone was going to drop from my hand. I began to shiver all over. My legs turned heavy all of a sudden. I then turned around and sat in front of the computer again, and for the next few seconds, I tried crosschecking the story on other local news websites. I was more than shocked. Some of those I was in the room with were quick to dismiss the story, with some insisting that until they see his dead body, they won't believe the story. They were wrong. Our “father for all” had given up the ghost.

President Mills is not a family member, nor a relative of mine. But like most Ghanaians, the news hit me hard. I had never really had any close interaction with President Mills, except for a brief contact in 2008, when he came to the Ashanti Region on a campaign tour, when I had the opportunity to get close to him as a result of the privilege I had to be on the daze as he addressed a teeming crowd of supporters at the Prempeh Assembly Hall. But over the years we have all come to have a fair idea of the sort of person he was through the lens of the public offices he had served. We may all have varying opinions about the sort of person John Mills was, and the sort of traits his 68 years on earth espoused, but there are a few attributes that not even his fiercest political opponents nor “enemies” can take away from him. He was deeply religious, humble, modest, peace loving, unifying, brilliant, humorous, resilient and bold. He understood the principles of service to a nation, he had bigger dreams for this nation than he was able to fulfill, and he had strong values that stood the test of time.

The health of John Mills has always been an issue in the political landscape in this country. But I never for once even imagined us losing him anytime soon with such heartbreaking swiftness. The death of President John Mills seven days down the line still looks like a dream to me. With the benefit of hindsight, and listening to some commentary since the black Tuesday incident, a lot of questions come into mind. Would John Mills had survived beyond Tuesday 24th July 2012 if he had stepped down as head of state earlier in his tenure and focused on improving upon his health condition? Would he had lived any longer if he had not been a subject of such severe critic and sometimes vindictiveness from leading figures within his own political party and political opponents alike since he was sworn in as president? Would he had lived to see 7th December 2012 if he had focused on his youthful profession as a lecturer and subsequently as a public servant and never gotten himself mixed up with party politics? Would the President still have been alive today if his handlers had not allowed him to continue travelling actively in and out of the country and jogging on the tarmacs at the Kotoka International Airport in the last few months? I don't think so. I would not want to be drawn into the argument of whether or not I do believe in destiny, nor do I want to sound overly religious, but I am more than convinced that when it comes to timelines as far as death is concerned, the only thing that can prolong the timing is prayer for God to alter the timetable. Beyond that, nothing else could change the timetable even if you are made to rest for the longest of duration, or you are treated in the best of hospitals. John Mills lived a meaningful life. That is why the whole nation is grieved over his demise.

But there is one thing that this bad news has shown us as a people and the whole world at large. That as a nation, Ghana is not as divided as our politics suggest. We remain one people, under one common flag, bearing allegiance to this great country. In these difficult times, we seem very united as one Ghanaian family. It has not mattered much which political party we belong to, nor has it mattered our ethnicity, nor has it mattered where we come from. All Ghanaians seem to be speaking with one voice, in sorrow of the departed soul of our leader. We began Tuesday 24th July 2012 with President John Mills as leader, but ended it with a long gaping hole in our hearts that would take years to fill. To the most hard hit homo sapien as far as this great tragedy is concerned, Dr. Ernestina Naadu Mills, we kneel to pray with you today, with an assurance to stand by you tomorrow. You would survive this period of grief in one piece, and this nation would pull through. May God bless the memory of President John Mills. And may God bless the Republic of Ghana.

By Joseph Opoku Gakpo Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology