Madam Theodosia Okoh has said the late President John Evans Atta Mills would have turned in his grave if his name had been kept on the National Hockey Stadium.
Speaking on Adom TV Pampaso programme from her home, 91-year-old Madam Okoh stressed “if the late President John Evans Ata Mills’ name had been kept on the hockey stadium he would have turned in his grave because he knew how hard I worked to make the stadium a reality and he even played on that pitch himself.”
Madam Okoh lauded the sitting President John Mahama for his swift intervention in overturning the highly criticized decision of Accra Mayor Dr. Alfred Oko Vanderpuije, describing the mayor and his team at AMA as “kids” who did not know what they were doing.
“As for the kids they did not know what they were doing,” she said.
Accra Mayor Dr. Vanderpuije came under very heavy criticism recently for replacing the name of Madam Theodosia Okoh with that of the late President Mills on Ghana’s Hockey Stadium.
Madam Theodosia Okoh registered her disapproval of the mayor’s move and that, among other things, moved President John Mahama to order the Accra Mayor to revert the name. The president has since been congratulated for his timely intervention and Madam Okoh even said she would love to meet the president and kiss his feet for showing maturity.
She explained that the location of the stadium did not look attractive at the time she requested to develop it into a hockey pitch, adding that a tunnel used for conveying bauxite from Dodowa mountains to the sea shore for export was close by that parcel of land, and she was asked not to build any structures on it because of the nearby tunnel.
She said her intention for asking for that parcel of land was to prepare Ghanaian hockey players for continental hockey tournaments and to also put Ghana in a position to host similar tournaments.
The designer of Ghana’s flag noted that her name was put on the hockey stadium as a matter of course because everybody involved in the process knew that beyond being the pioneer of the pitch, she was also actively involved in the entire process that led to the pitch being turned into the stadium it is today.
Madam Okoh said it was not a difficult decision for the stakeholders to put her name on the stadium because there was a unanimous decision that it had to be her and nobody else.
“The pitch is my gift to the country and I did not expect anything in return but it is not proper to undo a good thing done as a matter of course – but now the fight is over – the right thing has been done so there is no problem,” she said.
Touching on the need to honor heroes and heroines while they are alive, she said good morals teach that “if someone did something good for you, it is only fair for you to return the favor rather than doing things to cause the person pain.”
