The contradictions regarding the immediate cause of death of the late President John Evans Atta Mills are far from over, given the latest picture painted by the deceased’s own brother, Dr. Cadman Mills, during the burial rites last Friday, and the head pastor of the Light House Chapel, Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, blaming the departed president’s handlers for the mess.
Bishop Heward-Mills said government was not truthful in its dealings with the Ghanaian public on the issue of President Mills’s health.
According to him, the handlers of the late president lied to Ghanaians regarding his health, a situation he described as needless.
He made this known to Citi FM after the burial of the late President Mills at the Geese Park, also known as the Asomdwee Park, last Friday. Even though President Mills was not in the best of health conditions, his handlers and the NDC party created a picture of a healthy person, preventing him from seeking a thorough medical care because of political fallouts, until he died on July 24, 2012 at the 37 Military Hospital.
The Bishop said: “I think there is no need to deceive the public, we are all human beings and illness is not anybody’s fault and there was no need to lead us astray and create a context of such a shock.”
Bishop Heward-Mills also criticized the way the general public highly praised the late Ghanaian leader “as if he was the most loved and the best leader in everything, whereas a few weeks ago, he was criticized for everything.
This shows that we are not so honest when it comes to what we say and what we show.”
The criticism by the man of God is coming on the heels of a debate on whether the late president died at the Castle before being transported in an ordinary vehicle in the company of two men, or en route to the place or even upon reaching the premises of the UN rated foremost military hospital. This makes the theory even murkier.
Information reaching DAILY GUIDE indicates that the country’s military hospital is being asked to issue a statement authenticating the claim that the late president died at the facility.
However, the professionals at the hospital have turned it down, saying that it is unethical, knowing the implications.
What Killed Mills
Until the hospital authorities oblige this request, the veracity of exactly where the late president died would remain a matter of speculations, as government claimed that he died at the 37 Military Hospital at 2:15pm on that fateful day.
Earlier reports including an autopsy conducted on the body of President Mills at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital pointed to the fact that he died of cancer of the throat.
Dr. Cadman Mills’s divergent disclosure that his brother died of massive stroke and yet lifted his hand to the sky and uttered the spiritual words, “Lord I leave it all to you”, has raised eyebrows in medical circles and among those who know what the symptoms of the nervous conditions are.
The position that the late president likely died when there was nobody close to him, triggers the question about who heard him uttering those spiritual words and why that person did not call for help when it was glaring that the deceased needed it at that time.
Could he have been left to his fate and at the mercy of the two strange men to transport him to the military hospital with blood oozing from his nose, and mouth?
Why was the hospital not even informed about the conveyance of the president to the place and for the necessary preparation to be made before his arrival?
Was it because he was already dead and the Castle officials did not deem it not worth the candle?
For those who insisted on a coroner’s inquest but have not had their way, they have been provided an added impetus to continue posing questions about the cause of death of the late president by this latest disclosure by Dr. Cadman Mills.
Dr. Cadman Mills’s disclosure, which some found distasteful, stands apart from a previous DAILY GUIDE report and other versions that the late president choked on his blood at a time when there was nobody beside him.
Massive Stroke Theory
Dr. Cadman Mills’s massive stroke theory itself has come under intense query because those who suffer such a medical condition are unable to control their reflexes, let alone lift one hand and make the kind of terminal stage utterances he is reported to have made before giving up the ghost.
It also betrays the picture the departed president and his handlers, including Dr Cadman Mills, painted that he was as fit as a fiddle and suddenly slumped with the explanation that he died of massive stroke without raising a finger.
Dr Cadman Mills, when given the opportunity to deliver a vote of thanks, at the internment of President Mills at Geese Park Garden renamed Asomdwee Park, grabbed the microphone and did more than he had been mandated to do.
He indicated that his brother died shortly after a massive stroke, and that moments before his death, the late President Mills lifted up his hands and said, “Lord, I leave it all to you.”
The late president’s health challenges, which were shrouded in secrecy until he passed away, became a taboo subject and media houses which broached it directly or otherwise risked being subjected to all manner of insults.
While some believed that the president was ill, others digested the Information Ministry prepared and rehearsed denials.
The venerable Justice V.C.R.A.C. Crabbe, a retired justice of the Supreme Court, after paying tribute to the late president, told DAILY GUIDE that “most of us were depending on what we were being told.
However, how sick he was, we didn’t know, so his death comes as a great shock coupled with grief.”
The foregone lays out vividly how a section of Ghanaians were lured by the statements from government circles, especially the Castle, to believe that there was indeed nothing wrong with the late president’s health.
When Charles Takyi-Buadu, a senior reporter of the DAILY GUIDE, posed a question to the late president regarding his health condition when the deceased hosted the media at the Castle in January this year, he was viciously vilified by pro-NDC and Castle sponsored newspapers and on the social media network.
With the funeral now over, questions about what really went wrong would loom on the Ghanaian landscape.
The questions include; who shirked their responsibilities towards the state regarding taking care of the president and above all, there would be questions on why the coroner’s inquest bit remains a scary area.
The insistence on not responding to the queries by those close to what happened would definitely give rise to speculations, some close to the truth perhaps, others weird and outrageous.
As for whether he died at the military hospital or not, it is an answer which would support curious Ghanaians to make their own deductions.