At the Jubilee House this evening, Thursday 12 November 2020, a delegation from the Rawlings’ family visited the President to officially inform him of the passing of the former Ghanaian Head of State.
A family spokesperson informing President Akufo-Addo at the seat of the government about the death of JJ Rawlings revealed that the late ex-president took ill and was hospitalized a few days after burying his beloved mother on Saturday 23 October 24, 2020.
The family spokesperson while at the Jubilee House officially broke the sad news to the President saying;
“A great tragedy has befallen us as a country and as a family. Some four weeks ago we were here to inform the presidency of the death of our mother, our grandmother, our sister.
The president, because of his special love for the ex-president, he assisted us a lot in the burial of our mother.
Just some few days after the burial the former president Jerry John Rawlings felt sick and was hospitalized.
A lot of efforts were made, the president was in touch with his brother. Little did we know that the former president will leave us.
So we have come here formally to inform the president and the entire government that this is what has happened.
Jerry John Rawlings is no more and we deem it appropriate to come and inform you officially.” Mr Rawlings died at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra after suffering a short illness”.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in response to the family said; “I will like to extend my deepest condolences to the family, his widow, children, brothers and the entire family.
“I was given this information when I arrived at the office and I found it hard up to now to cope with the information. This is a man of great vitality, dynamism and energy.
“It is very difficult to go and see a dead body lying in the morgue but then it is one of the things that all of us have got to get used to because the almighty has his plans for each one of us.
“I am extremely disturbed and saddened by his passage. He is not an ordinary Ghanaian, he was the first president of our Fourth Republic.”
Akufo-Addo told the family that he and the late former president of Ghana, Jerry John Rawlings had a rough and wild connection that dated years.
But, he said, in the end, the two of them saw value in each other and became the best of friends.
“He and I had a tempestuous relationship over many years but I believe that we came to see value in each other in the end.
