“We are deeply distraught, devastated as a country,” Ghana’s new president, John Mahama said on Tuesday after his
swearing-in ceremony, succeeding his boss and predecessor, the late President John Atta Mills, who died earlier in the day.
Mr. Mahama later raised the golden staff of office above his head.
John Mahama’s swift inauguration underscored Ghana’s stability in a part of the world where the deaths of other leaders have sparked coups or deadly intrigues like the one seen following the death of Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’Adua in May 5, 2010.
Weeks of uncertainty held the Nigerian state hostage to power-play between loyalists to the late president of Nigeria and the supporters of his would-be successor in Vice President Goodluck Jonathan. Mr. Jonathan, the constitutionally empowered official to succeed the late president, eventually emerged as president after serving as acting president for months – much to the relief of most Nigerians.
Unlike the case with Nigeria, President John Atta Mills’ election victory secured Ghana’s reputation as one of the most mature democracies in West Africa, a position further solidified Tuesday when the vice president took over only hours after the 68-year-old president died five months before finishing his first term.
Ghanaian state-run television stations GTV and TV3 broke into their regular programming to announce the president’s death Tuesday afternoon. Government officials did not release the cause of his death, which came three days after his 68th birthday.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said “President Mills will be remembered for his statesmanship and years of dedicated service to his country,” according to a statement from his spokesman.
“At this time of national mourning, the secretary-general renews the commitment of the United Nations to work alongside the government and the people of Ghana in support of their efforts to consolidate the country’s democratic and development achievements,” the spokesman said.
Rumors had swirled about Atta Mills’ health in recent months after he made several trips to the United States, and opposition newspapers had reported he was not well enough to run for a second term.
Some radio stations even announced that he was dead during one of his recent trips to the States. When Atta Mills returned to Ghana, he jogged at the airport and blasted those who had falsely reported his death.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “President Mills will be remembered for his statesmanship and years of dedicated service to his country,” his spokesman said. Ban pledged that the United Nations would support Ghana’s efforts “to consolidate the country’s democratic and development achievements.”
On the streets of Cape Coast, kilometers (80 miles) from Accra, people held radios to their ears on the street, listening to the funeral hymns playing on FM stations and waiting for more information about the president’s unexpected death.
“His speeches were full of a spirit of love and peace,” said Efua Mensima, 45. “He was soft-spoken. I wept when I heard of his death.”
In a predominantly Ghanaian section of Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, a group of 10 men tried to organize a bus to take them to Ghana for the president’s funeral.
“The Ghanaian people were happy with this president and his program for the development of the country,” said Nour Ousmane Aladji, 27, a taxi driver who moved to Abidjan in 2000.
Chris Fomunyoh, the senior director for Africa for the Washington-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, said that Ghana’s democracy could weather the death of a president.
In other nations in West Africa, the death of a ruler usually spells a coup, as it did in neighboring Guinea following the 2008 death of longtime dictator Lansana Conte, and Togo, where the military seized power after the president’s death in 2005 in order to install the leader’s son.