Following the death of President John Evans Ata Mills Tuesday afternoon, Ghanaians began to experience difficulties in getting phone calls through to each other.
There were also reported challenges in getting access to the internet around the same period.
This lasted for a few minutes, but was attributed to the huge traffic of calls from people either calling to inform others of the President’s death, or calling to confirm the rumor, which spread like wild fire within a matter minutes.
Officials of some of the telecom networks confirmed to Adom News that there is a basic amount of voice and data traffic that could go through each base transceiver station at a time, but in the few minutes after the president’s demise, some areas experienced capacity issues due to the huge amount of traffic flow.
The telcos have not been able to measure the extent of congestion on their respective networks within that brief moment, but at least they were unanimous in their observation.
People, who called from the Castle to inform some media personnel about the President’s death, could not hold back their tears on the phone.
While Ghanaians were yet debating the truth or otherwise of the information, some foreign news correspondents in Ghana had twitted it on their pages and stated where he died and what killed him.
Meanwhile Wikipedia also updated the late President’s biography stating “Dr. John Evans Ata Mills – born 21 July, 1944, died 24 July, 2012.”
The web encyclopedia (Wikipedia) also stated President John Evans Atta Mills died at 16:30 GMT Tuesday July 24 2012 at the 37 Military Hospital two days after celebrating his 68th birthday.
But local media reports said he died at 14:15GMT after being rushed to the 37 Military Hospital.
The late President John Evans Atta Mills died three days after he celebrated his 68th birthday on July 21, 2012.
International media like CNN, BBC and Aljazeera reported that he died of throat cancer, quoting hospital authorities.
But until now, government communicators had insisted the late President suffered from sinusitis and not throat cancer.
The late president’s palms turned dark at some point and medical experts said it was a sign of an advanced stage a cancer, but could they not put a finger on it.
The late President Mills was the first sitting president to have died before the end of his term, and the first to have been president for only one four-year term in Ghana’s Fourth Republic.
His successor, President John Dramani Mahama, sworn into office under Article 60 (6 – 10) of the 1992 Constitution, described his the late president as “a father, a friend and a senoir colleague, saying his death was “unprecedented” and “sad”.
Several Ghanaians both here and abroad, and from both sides of the political divide could not hold back their tears talking about the president’s demise.