By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

One year after his death and widespread speculation over what caused the same, the only known child and son of President John Evans Atta-Mills has reportedly told the Herald newspaper that contrary to many published reports, he has never granted any interview to any media operative or organization intimating that the late president died of poisoning (See "My Dad Was Not Poisoned - Mills' Son" The Herald 7/29/13).

The rest of the article does not contain much that is of relevance to the Ghanaian public, except to report that Mr. Samuel Kofi Atta-Mills, the son of the deceased president, has largely been schooled on the British Isles, which, of course, clearly answers the question as to why President Mills did shockingly little to improve the quality and standard of Ghana's public educational system.

But what we are more concerned with here is the report that the younger Mr. Atta-Mills is a specialist in something called "Construction Management." We are avidly interested in the latter because it clearly indicates that Mr. Samuel Kofi Atta-Mills has absolutely no forensic expertise, whatsoever, to inform Ghanaians about the cause of the death of the late president. And so whoever put the young man out there to make such a reckless statement, has only succeeded in further complicating matters and intensifying our initial suspicions as to what actually caused the death of Ghana's former executive chief of state.

That it has taken the younger Mr. Atta-Mills more than one year to deny the comments widely attributed to him, regarding the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of his father, seriously undermines the credibility of the young man. If his belated public denial was calculated by any key operatives within the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) to hoodwink the Ghanaian public, then I am afraid this strategy has woefully backfired. For Ghanaians still have a constitutional right to know what killed their former president; and the most forensically credible cause-of-death explanation ought to come from a professionally certified coroner or pathologist.

What is the Mahama government afraid of, if, indeed, it had no hand in the mysterious and sudden death of President Atta-Mills, as it has vehemently sought to maintain? Just the other day, for instance, the late leader's communications director told the Ghanaian media that he had been dreaming about President Mills on a daily basis since July 25, 2012, and that the late president, whom he regarded as his own father, wanted Ghanaians to know that he was happy and doing great "wherever he is."

Now, come on, is Koku Anyidoho's clearly drug-induced hallucination supposed to be a forensically sustainable substitute for a coroner's report? The Mahama posse had better come clean or have itself to blame for so flagrantly ignoring universal protocol.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
July 29, 2013
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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