President John Dramani Mahama has personally visited the residence of Mrs Theodosia Okoh to render an apology to the 91-year old for the move by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to rename the national hockey stadium in memory of late President Mills.
Although the President Mahama had apologized earlier, he, together with the AMA Boss, Dr Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije and the Minister for Youth and Sports, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah went to convey the apologies.
According to Citifmonline, son of Mrs Theodosia Okoh, Kwesi Okoh said in an interview shortly after the President’s visit that “The Mayor [Nii Oko Vanderpuije] apologised profusely [to my mother and] they hugged. An apology has been given; apology has been accepted”.
“My mother after all that has gone on has decided that the past is the past; she has forgotten everything that has gone on, it has been corrected…and that is all forgotten,” Kwesi Okoh said.
“The main message my mother was trying to give to everybody was not the fact that she had been involved but she didn’t like the message that came with it ––– that people who had done something for the country were going to be forsaken eventually. She wants people to be proud of Ghana; she wants people to want to do things for Ghana and to know that we honour our heroes…and they shall not be forsaken in the future by some politician…”
The AMA, following the one year anniversary of the passing away of the late president, renamed the facility to honour the late president under whose administration the old national hockey pitch was rebuilt into a modern stadium.
The renaming sparked public outrage and it took a Presidential intervention to reverse the AMA’s decision.
President Mahama over the weekend rendered a similar apology to Mrs Theodosia Okoh in a speech at Cape Coast, describing the attempts to rename the stadium after the late president “a most sad mistake”.