The Rawlings family called on President Nana Akufo-Addo on Thursday, 18 February 2021, to thank him and the government for giving the late President Jerry John Rawlings a “befitting” burial.

The President wrote on his Facebook page: “On Thursday, 18 February 2021, the family of the late Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings paid a courtesy call on me at Jubilee House, the seat of the nation's presidency, to thank the government for the befitting burial accorded the first President of the fourth Republic on 27 January 2021.”

Mr Rawlings died in the morning of Thursday, 12 November 2020 at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra.

Mr Rawlings had buried his mother, Victoria Agbotui, who was 101 years old, a month earlier.

He was 73 years old.

Mr Rawlings was born on 22 June 1947.

He was a former military leader, who subsequently became a civilian politician and led the country from 1981 to 2001 and also for a brief period in 1979.

He led a military junta until 1992, and then served two terms as the democratically-elected President of Ghana.

Rawlings initially came to power as a flight lieutenant of the Ghana Air Force following a coup d’etat in 1979.

Prior to that, he led an unsuccessful coup attempt against the ruling military government on 15 May 1979, just five weeks before scheduled democratic elections were due to take place.

After initially handing over power to a civilian government, he took back control of the country on 31 December 1981, as the Chairman of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC).

In 1992, Mr Rawlings resigned from the military, founded the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and became the first President of the Fourth Republic.

He was re-elected in 1996 for four more years.

After two terms in office, Mr Rawlings stepped aside and endorsed his vice-president, the late John Atta Evans Atta Mills, as a presidential candidate in 2000.