I Cooked For AU Presidents – Konadu Rawlings

Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, wife of former President Rawlings says she was virtually a cook during the just-concluded African Union (AU) Summit, as Presidents and Heads of State placed orders for food.

Mrs. Rawlings, life president of the 31st December Women’s Movement (DWM) disclosed that she cooked for a number of African leaders who attended the AU Summit held in Accra.

According to her, her kind gesture was at the request of the presidents whose cordial relationship with her family dates back several years when her husband was in office.

Speaking on Fox FM last Monday, Mrs. Konadu said several of the presidents phoned her on arrival in the country, requesting her to prepare dishes for them. She said even the President of La Cote D’Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo, whom she did not know that well, sent for water- a request she generously granted.

However, Hon. Akwasi Osei-Adjei, deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and NEPAD instantly dismissed the claims, wondering how the former First Lady managed to send food to the presidents. The minister seemed puzzled at the claim because, according to him, security at the Presidential Village where a number of the visiting heads of state lived for the five-day event, was so tight that only persons accredited to visit the area were allowed in, after showing their identity cards.

He said Nana Konadu’s family was not given any authority to visit the area, so he wondered how she managed to send food to her so-called president-friends, indicating she might have breached security. Significantly, Konadu Agyemang made these disclosures in answer to a question suggesting that there was a special rapport between the Rawlingses and the Libyan Leader, Col. Muammar Al-Gaddafi. She disclosed that even though a number of the 52 African leaders who turned up for the summit immediately phoned to inform them of their arrival, the Libyan strongman, who was supposedly close to her husband, never called to even say hello.

However, Gaddafi’s posters were on some of the buses she hired for her supporters during her recent appearance in court, weeks after the departure of the Libyan Leader at the end of the AU summit.She denied that a serious relationship existed between her husband and Gaddafi and accused the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government of always manufacturing lies and then publicizing them on the Internet.Mrs. Rawlings disabused the minds of the public that supporters of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), in one of her court appearances , stormed the premises of the court in solidarity with her and brandished photographs of the Libyan Leader.

She accused Daily Guide of dragging her children into her case with a publication that her kids were in court, “as if my children had committed an offence”. She said Daily Guide would have been censured and gagged if it operated in an advanced country. “This is a very serious thing. We don’t do that. But they are doing it because they are paid for it,” she screamed. Former President Rawlings’ wife flayed authorities of the National Media Commission (NMC) for failing to call the paper to order.

Earlier, Mrs. Rawlings had admitted that she had used her trips abroad to inform the international community about the ‘bad actions’ of the NPP government which pastors, chiefs, the media and opinion leaders had failed to criticise. She said in her bid to clear herself from the allegations made against her, she had no option but to inform the outside world about the theft and abuse of power going on in the Kufuor Administration. She alleged that never in the history of the country had a president, his ministers and relations stolen from state coffers, with no action being taken against them.