Late President Mills embarrassed me – Acting Public Affairs Dir. of Parliament

Acting Director of Public Affairs of Ghana’s Parliament, Kate Addo says she felt hugely embarrassed by late President Attah Mills in the year 2004 when he openly snubbed her after a request for an interview.

According to her that was one of the very low moments in her long journalism career as she was rooted to the spot after that encounter with the then opposition leader Prof. Attah Mills.

In the year 2004, Kate Addo who was then working with the State broadcaster, the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) was assigned to cover that year’s State of the Nation Address presented by then President J.A Kufuor.

Kate at the end of the event lined up personalities she wanted to interview including Prof. Atta Mills for their views about the address by presented.

However, she had the rudest shock of her life when she was openly snubbed by Prof. Attah Mills who was at the time the leading opposition party, as the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had accused Ghana Television (GTV) of been biased against the party.

In an interview with Bola Ray on Starr Chat Wednesday, Kate Addo recounting her unpleasant experience on that fateful day.

“When I was asked to cover the State of the Nation Address by President Kufour and do an analysis of the situation, I lined up those I was going to talk to, at that time Professor Mills was teaching in Canada and because I had worked closely with him when he was vice President I felt I could go and speak to him.

"So I walked towards the Professor, and I said Sir please I would like to speak to you then suddenly…all hell broke loose. I hadn’t been in town for a while, so I didn’t know what had happened in my absence. Don’t get me wrong there; Prof. was a very good man but for some reason and of all the people in the world it had to be me he did that to. I was so embarrassed; I was rooted to the spot”.

She said she was not daunted by that discouraging experience but managed to get the recorded interview from other TV stations.

“When I returned to the office for some reason I didn’t mention the incident to my editor. So I played the sound bites, and everything was fine. I was at home at 5:00am the following day when I started getting calls that every newspaper in Ghana had that issue as their headline. So Prof. Mills called me and said Kate I’m very sorry I was in a bad place and I (Kate) felt that it was genuine so we put that behind us, I got the opportunity to work with him subsequently” Kate Addo noted.