Dozens of Mourners Thursday night attended a vigil church service at the Ho Polytechnic auditorium, organized by the Volta Regional Coordinating Council as part of the final funeral rites for the late President John Evans Atta Mills.
The service was interspersed with solemn choral music from selected choirs from both charismatic and orthodox churches and the Ghana Police band. The over 1200 capacity auditorium was also filled up with large numbers of mourners monitoring the service on screens outside the auditorium.
Earlier, the mourners clad in black & red attires, thronged the streets of Ho in a candle-light procession amidst singing of traditional dirges with brass band music in honour of the late President.
Among the mourners were the clergy, traditional rulers, public and civil servants as well as government officials and leaders of the various political parties.
In a sermon, the Catholic Bishop of Ho, Most Reverend Francis K.A. Lodonu extolled the humility and peaceful nautre of the late President Mills and said he “stands tall in the politics of reconciliation, justice and peace.”
Bishop Lodonu noted that, President Mills’ death has opened a new chapter in the Ghanaian political landscape as his death has united the entire nation. He therefore asked Ghanaians to take delight in this newness and cultivate the “great virtues” of the late President Mills and not to go back to the ‘politics of vengeance and vindictiveness’.
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| cross-section of mourners |
The Volta regional minister, Mr Henry Ford Kamel said the late President Mills will always be remembered for his good virtues and legacies of development projects across the country and declared “President Mills never dies”.
Mr Kamel challenged politicians to endeavour to love one another irrespective of status and political affiliations.
In a tribute, the Volta Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Kenwood Nuworsu said the death of the late President Mills has exposed the beautiful sides of politics in the country.
“The demise of our beloved President Mills has united all of us beautifully and showed that our politics can survive without insults and abuses,” he said.
The Volta regional secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Simon Viglo-Amegashie, said the death of President Mills came as a shock to party in the region and described him as a man who ‘left his mark in the sand of history in the politics of tolerance and peaceful co-existence’.
There were tributes, from the Volta Regional House of Chiefs, and other organized groups and individuals.
