Akufo-Addo took ‘good care’ of Rawlings than Mills, Mahama – Stephen Atubiga

It is emerging that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo took good care of late President Jerry John Rawlings before and after his election in December 2016.

According to Stephen Atubiga, a suspended member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), President Akufo-Addo took better care of Jerry John Rawlings Than former President Atta Mills and John Mahama.

“I can tell you on authority that Akufo-Addo Took Good care of Rawlings than John Mahama and Atta Mills did when he was alive. Akufo-Addo was very close to Rawlings and he took good care of him. I know what I am telling you” He said.

The revelation by Atubiga comes after Akufo-Addo confirmed he had a good relationship with the former President After they started out as “enemies”.

After the death of ex-President Rawlings, Akufo-Addo read out a tribute:

“It was no secret that the relationship that existed between the two of us, right from the heady days of 1979, through to my brief period in exile, his assumption of office as the 1st President of the 4th Republic, the historic Kume Preko demonstrations, my period as Attorney General and Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Kufuor administration, to my being elected 2008 NPP presidential candidate, was one of open animosity. We did not see eye to eye!!

“However, with time, things changed. We came to see value in each other, and understood, to a very large degree, our respective perspectives. One thing we had in common was our mutual commitment to public service.

“My visit to his Ridge residence in 2012 signified the easing of tensions between us, leading to a friendship that lasted for the better part of some eight (8) years. Indeed, when the Ghanaian people, in 2016, reposed, for the first time, their confidence in me in the elections of that year, one of the first persons on whom I paid a courtesy call was His Excellency, Jerry John Rawlings.

“From my entry into office, right up to the day he was called by his Maker, he remained a good friend and a repository of sound advice. I knew that, in moments of difficulty in my presidency, I could count on his considerable wealth of experience and knowledge. On those occasions, he came through for me.

“There was a symbolic gesture he advanced to me at the funeral of his late mother, Madam Victoria Agbotui, held at the Forecourt of the State House on 24th October 2020. It was to be our last time together. He was called up by the clergy to receive special prayers as the only surviving son. He told the men of God to wait and called for me to walk up to join him to receive the special prayers. He whispered to my ears as I stood beside him: “I reminded them that they should pray for you also because you had also lost your mother.” I was touched by this.

“It is for good reason that his well-known, oft-cited ideals of “probity and accountability”, in which he invested a great deal of his political capital, have been enshrined in the Constitution of the 4th Republic, and, together with “Freedom and Justice”, the words of our nation’s motto, constitute the foundational principles on which social order is to be developed in Ghana.”.