In accordance with Ghana’s constitution, Vice President John Dramani
Mahama was sworn in today as president before an emergency session of
parliament following the death of President John Atta Mills.
Mahama pledged to maintain stability as he serves out the remainder of Mills’ term.
“I
wish Ghanaians to be assured that all is well,” he said. “We are going
to maintain the peace, unity and stability that Ghana is noted for.” He declared a week of national mourning, with flags to be flown at half-mast.
In
his recollections of life-changing moments while growing up in Ghana,
he once wrote that he was forever changed by his boyhood experiences
during a 1966 military coup.
The 53-year-old who had been vice
president was born in Bole Bamboi in northern Ghana and holds degrees in
history and communications, according to Ghanian media.
He served
as a diplomat in Japan in the early 1990s before returning to Ghana,
where he was first elected to parliament as a member of the National
Democratic Congress (NDC) party.
He later became the chairman of
the West Africa Caucus at the Pan African Parliament in Pretoria, before
deceased president Mills tipped him for the vice presidency.
Mills died on Tuesday at a hospital in Accra following an unspecified illness. Mahama, according to a recently published memoir, grew up as a child of privilege. In
the book, “My First Coup d’Etat — And Other True Stories from the Lost
Decades of Africa,” he describes his experiences at an elite boarding
school in the capital Accra, where he was drilled in the customs of
Ghana’s former colonial power, Britain.
“The history and prestige (of the Achimota boarding school) did not stop me from hating it,” he wrote.
In
the book’s first chapter, he vividly recalls the day in 1966 when he
learned Ghana’s founding president Kwame Nkrumah was ousted in a
military coup.
“When I look back on my life it’s clear to me that
this moment marked the awakening of my consciousness. It changed my life
and influenced all the moments that followed,” he wrote.
His father, who served as junior minister in Nkrumah’s government, was briefly detained and interrogated by the coup leaders.
Mahama
described his journey around Accra, accompanied by an official from his
school, in search of his father, who was later released unharmed.
Source: PM News
