We Are Sorry - President, AMA Boss Tell Theodosia

Alfred Oko Vanderpuije

More than a week after intense public pressure caused President Mahama to order the Mayor of Accra to maintain the National Hockey Stadium, the President, and the Mayor Nii Oko Vanderpuije, on Thursday visited Theodosia Okoh, the woman who designed the Ghana Flag, to jointly apologise to her for the abortive move by city authorities to rename the pitch.

In honour of the late President John Mills, the AMA passed a resolution last week to rename the national hockey pitch – a facility which already bore the name of Ghana's national flag designer, Theodosia Okoh.

A formal renaming ceremony was subsequently organised by the AMA boss, sparking public outrage. 

It took a Presidential intervention to reverse the AMA's decision after some prominent journalists and ordinary citizens threatened to sue the AMA for committing an 'illegality'. 

Since then, the President has been under sustained pressure to remove the AMA boss from office.

Today's joint visit by the President and the AMA boss will thus be seen as a clever move to end public criticism that the man tasked with the responsibly of managing the national capital continues to draw.

Minister of Youth and Sports, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah was part of the delegation that visited the frail former Ghana Hockey Association Chief.

'The Mayor [Nii Oko Vanderpuije] apologised profusely [to my mother and] they hugged,' Kwesi Okoh, son of the 91-year-old woman told CitiNews shortly after the President's visit. 'An apology has been given; apology has been accepted'.

It came days after the President over the weekend rendered a similar apology to Mrs. Okoh in a speech at Cape Coast. 

'Let me express our regret to our grandmother Mrs. Theodosia Okoh for any emotional trauma [she may have suffered] as a result of the renaming of the national hockey pitch…' the President said. 'The pitch shall continue to be called the Theodosia Okoh National Hockey Stadium'.

Calling the AMA's abortive renaming of the National Hockey Stadium a 'sad mistake,' the Ghanaian leader told the huge gathering at the Robert Mensah Sports Stadium that: 'Prof. [Mills] himself in life would not have accepted [the name-change'. 

The President's open apology from Cape Coast prompted a new storm of public outrage, with critics insisting he should have compelled his subordinate, the AMA boss, to apologise for leading his assembly to unlawfully rename the National Hockey Stadium.

'My mother after all that has gone on has decided that the past is the past; she has forgotten everything that has gone on, it has been corrected…and that is all forgotten,' Kwesi Okoh said.

'The main message my mother was trying to give to everybody was not the fact that she had been involved but she didn't like the message that came with it - that people who had done something for the country were going to be forsaken eventually. She wants people to be proud of Ghana; she wants people to want to do things for Ghana and to know that we honour our heroes…and they shall not be forsaken in the future by some politician…'

Citifmonline