Ernest Kofi Owusu Bempah, convenor of Fixing the Country
Members of the ‘Fixing The Country Movement’ have called for a full probe into the death of former President John Evans Atta Mills.
A press statement issued yesterday by the convener of the group, Ernest Kofi Owusu Bempah, said it had been ten years since former President Mills passed away but the mystery surrounding his death won’t go away.
Mr Owusu Bempah said there had been growing calls for the state to investigate Mills’ death, and the latest to join in the public outcry is no less a person than his former Director of Communications, Samuel Koku Anyidoho.
“Fixing The Country Movement fully endorse the call by Koku Anyidoho and many other well-meaning Ghanaians to have an inquest into Prof Mills’ death. We support an urgent action for a public inquiry/investigations to be carried out by an independent commission to clarify the cause of death of former president John Evans Atta Mills.
“Our support for this call is premised on the fact that the inquest will provide a clear account of events and run-up to the circumstances leading to the demise of the former president,” he noted.
Dozens of claims
Mr Owusu Bempah indicated that there had been dozens of claims as to the cause of death, adding some had even accused former President Mahama directly of allegedly having a hand in President Mills’ death.
“These claims are actually supported by many unanswered questions, and it has become more of a national security matter. In actual fact, former President Mahama himself is on record to have petitioned the Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department of the Police Service over claims by one Abronye DC to the effect that he, Mahama, had a hand in late President Mills’ death. The police hierarchy, we are told, actually launched full scale investigations into Mahama’s complaints. But we’re not sure of the outcome of the investigations,” part of the statement read.
He added that members of the group do not doubt the competence of the country’s investigative authorities to get to the bottom of this worrying issue.
“We respectfully submit and appeal to… the President to use his Executive powers under Article 278 to take immediate action in instituting a commission of inquiry to look into this long, unwinding and unending allegations of complicity of the state in the death of President Mills.
“Section 2(3) of the Coroners Act, 1960 clearly states that ‘The person in charge of a hospital in which a person has died an unnatural death shall forthwith give notice of the death to the coroner for the district’,” he stated.
No coroner’s inquest
He claimed that there was no coroner’s inquest in the matter under scrutiny, saying “the inquest can set the record straight about what happened, why, and who bears responsibility for Mills’ demise”.
“The conjecture that these matters are better left to the family to deal with, and that the departed must be allowed to rest peacefully underscore the shield of vagueness and the normative concealment of probative facts which gloss over the depth of rot in such a national security matter,” Mr Owusu Bempah stressed.
The group therefore requested the immediate intervention of the state to ensure a bipartisan inquisitorial process in a prompt and impartial manner to unravel the actual cause of death.
“When this is done, we can all allow the soul of President Mills to rest peacefully. It is our belief that a further investigative scrutiny and determination will ensure that the country becomes aware of the outcome of the Coroner’s Inquest, and the circumstances surrounding the death of Prof Mills,” the statement concluded.
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