Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings has said that Prof Kwamena Ahwoi’s book “Working with Rawlings” was written using speculative imagination.
According to her, Prof Ahwoi needs to do a lot of homework before he writes.
“I hate people who are [in academia] yet write by speculative imagination. He’s got to do homework and write,” she said on Asaase radio’s Sunday Night show broadcast.
Nana Konadu added that the Afiadenyigba incident had nothing to do with her, insisting that the incident had happened before she got to the place.
Prof. Kwamena Ahwoi has stated in his book “Working with Rawlings” that an incident at Afiadenyigba between Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings and Ernestina Naadu Mills, former first and second lady respectively, was the main reason Rawlings fell out with his vice president, Prof. J.E. Atta-Mills.
According to Prof Kwamena Ahwoi, he was summoned by President Rawlings to the Castle sometime in April 2000, and there Rawlings “threatened to disown and disinherit Professor Mills as the NDC’s Presidential Candidate for some ‘insolence’ that Mrs Mills had shown to his wife, Nana Konadu, at a political event at Afiadenyigba in the Dangbe East District of the Greater Accra Region, and which Nana Konadu had reported to him”.
But Nana Konadu explained that one of the etiquettes that J.J. Rawlings insisted on at public events which became custom was not to drive into durbar grounds, thereby whipping up dust onto the chiefs, other royals and the community generally. It, therefore, became an unspoken rule from the 1980s that government officials arriving at any function were to alight from their vehicles at the periphery of the durbar grounds and walk onto the grounds.
She narrated that she was going to commission a project at Afiadenyigba, Ada, for which she invited Mrs Mills to assist her. Nana Konadu said that she had plans to officially outdoor Naadu Mills to the Dangbe community. Although protocol arranged for the First Lady and Vice President’s wife to travel together, Mrs. Mills decided to take the lead, according to Rawlings’s wife.
“When I got there, there was a lot of commotion and problems and it was because the two cars preceding Mrs Mills had driven into the arena and the policeman had stopped them and said they could not drive further. They should get back and walk. She got upset and didn’t understand what was going on. The policeman tried to explain but it didn’t sit […..] well with her. Some elderly organizers went on their knees, pleading, with Mrs Mills who was clearly upset and said she was going back to Accra,” Nana Konadu narrated.
“When I got there and asked what […..] the problem […..], they tried to tell me what had happened so I told them it’s okay, I’ll solve the problem. When it was her [Mrs Mills] time to speak she refused so I had to step in and say she was a bit under the weather…,” Nana Konadu recounted.
She also indicated the Afiadenyigba incident did not affect the relationship she had with the late Prof John Evans Atta Mills.
Ghanaweb
