HE WAS CONSIDERING RE-ELECTION, BUT...R.I.P. ATTAH MILLS - GHANA'S PRESIDENT

Sickly Attah Mills

At 68, Ghana's President John Atta Mills vowed to spread Ghana’s wealth stemming from newly discovered offshore oil fields, but today, we mourn his death.

Chief of Staff John Henry Martey Newman told the nation that Atta Mills had died Tuesday afternoon at the 37th Military Hospital in Accra but gave no details about the cause of his death.Information Minister Fritz Baffour later confirmed that Atta Mills had died but also declined to comment further...Ghana’s parliament was to hold an emergency meeting immediately.

President Mills celebrated his 68th birthday Saturday. He traveled to the United States in March and met for a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House. He also traveled to the U.S. in April as well, as rumors about his health began to circulate Ghana.

An unnamed top govt official said: “We are hearing that he died of cancer of the throat. I saw him in Addis Ababa — not this meeting, but the one maybe six months ago,”

“He was walking slowly. I am surprised to learn that he is only 68. He looked much older.”

And he concluded by saying:

“Yes, his death is a surprise — it’s six months before the election, and he was a candidate.”

Atta Mills was elected in a 2008 runoff vote — his third presidential bid — and 

“People are complaining. They’re saying that their standard of living has deteriorated these past eight years,” he said. “So if Ghana is a model of growth, it’s not translating into something people can feel.”

Atta Mills even put up campaign posters of himself standing next to a cutout of Obama in an effort to emphasize that the Ghanaian stood for change.

He spent much of his career teaching at the University of Ghana. He earned a doctorate from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies before becoming a Fulbright scholar at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

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