It Is Ironic Rawlings’ End Came In The Comfort Of A Bed – Akufo-Addo’s Cousin Writes
Nana Yaa Ofori-Atta, a communications consultant and cousin to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has written a brief of her childhood recollection and an interesting eulogy of the late President Jerry John Rawlings.
She wrote on her Facebook timeline: “It is particularly ironic that the end, came in the comfort of a bed, in Korle Bu. Nurses and doctors, paid, on duty, equipment ready to save even his life.”
After the death of Rawlings on Thursday, November 12, President Akufo-Addo announced that the state will fund his funeral and give him a befitting burial.
This, Nana Yaa says, during Rawlings’s days as Head of State and President of Ghana, he never accorded his predecessors who passed away and were entitled to the same state courtesy; rather by his order, they were “trussed up like turkeys, without dignity, summarily executed, for public entertainment” and they were “dumped in unmarked graves and left to rot there”.
Recounting what she described as a “childhood villa kakalika”, Nana Yaa Ofori-Atta reiterated the famous “let the blood flow” mantra during the days of the June 4 Revolution which was led by JJ Rawlings.
“I remember my mother howling at night, when ‘news’ of the discovery of the burnt bodies of the judges finally came to gory light. It was curfew days. Lights out. She wouldn’t stop,” Nana Yaa wrote. “I remember fear. I remember those who went quiet and smirked. Those who suddenly didn’t know you. And those who opened their doors. I remember the silence of abject defeat and poverty. The smell of it. I remember running. The indignity of exile. At least we were alive.”
Nana Yaa continued: “Let the eulogies of those who benefited from the upending of this country, twice, the casual abbreviation of life, the vicious devastation of lives, let the after the bloody fact apologists and half-blind, continue.
She charged: “Let no one today, say to the grieving family may he ‘Rust in Pieces’. At all. Yesterday’s Man. I will vote every vestige of you and yours out, again and again.”
“Yesterday’s Man. Small boys are young,” She concluded.