The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Atta Mills Institute, Mr Koku Anyidoho, has said the legacy of the late President John Evans Atta Mills has not been well-preserved by the state.

Mr Anyidoho bemoaned that the Asomdwe Park, where the late President was buried, was not properly constructed but abandoned by the late professor’s own party, the National Democratic Congress, when they were in power.

He, however, said the current government, led by President Nana Akufo-Addo, is constructing the Asomdwe Park, which he believes will be inaugurated next year to mark the 10-year anniversary of the passing of Prof Mills.

Speaking on Anopa Dwabirem on CTV on Wednesday, 16 June 2021, Mr Anyidoho, who was Prof Mills’ press secretary, said: “The legacy of Atta Mills hasn’t been well-preserved. That is why some of us in the Atta Mills Institute are championing the preservation of the legacy”.

“It is not the job of one person; that is why in humility, I approached the government of the day for the construction of the Asomdwe Park because, at the end of the day, the whole monument will belong to the Republic of Ghana, it will not be my personal property. I’m just a disciple of the late president and I believe he needs a befitting burial place”, he told host Nana Yaw Adwenpa.

As a member of the original planning funeral committee, Mr Anyidoho explained that when Prof Mills died on 24 July 2012, they had about three weeks to bury him on 10 August 2012 and, so, the Asomdwe Park was done in a hurry for his burial.

After the burial, he said “there was a master plan, a comprehensive plan to construct the Asomdwe Park so that during the first anniversary of his death, we will unveil it for Ghanaians. But, unfortunately, it never happened under his own NDC government.”

“But Ghana is not for one person, so, if it didn’t happen under NDC and it’s happening under NPP, all to the glory of God. And, so, we will get the Asomdwe Park and next year, God willing, the President, His Excellency Nana Akufo-Addo will commission it and let Ghanaians see that what some of us have been pursuing is worthwhile and not because we dislike someone…it is befitting that Atta Mills is remembered in a way that brings glory to him and the state”.

Prof John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills was a legal scholar who served as President from 2009 until his death in 2012.

He was inaugurated on 7 January 2009, having defeated the governing party candidate-then Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2008 election. He was previously the Vice President from 1997 to 2001 under the late President Jerry John Rawlings and he contested unsuccessfully in the 2000 and 2004 elections as the candidate of the NDC.

He was the first Ghanaian head of state to die in office.