Nana Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng joins ancestors!
The last week of May 2025 was not kind!
When my phone rang in the early hours of Tuesday, May 27, 2025, I asked with trepidation, “Why do you make my heart miss a beat with this dawn call?”
The grim answer through wailing was, “Exactly so! Nana is gone!”
This is how the news of the death in the UK on Monday, May 26, 2025, of distinguished veteran journalist, former Chairman of the National Media Commission and current Board Chair of the Ghana News Agency, Nana Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng, aged 74, was broken to me!
On May 28, the death also in the UK was reported of 94-year-old Ghanaian medical doctor and international Sickle Cell consultant/icon Professor Felix Konotey-Ahulu.
On the same day, East Africa’s greatest novelist, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, died at 87!
These deaths took me back to my first article published in the Daily Graphic on January 1, 2015, titled Kofi Chokosi Speaks - Life is short!, after my retirement from the Ghana Armed Forces in 2014. It read:
Not surprisingly, on account of cricket’s unpopularity in this country, the sudden death of the 25-year-old Australian international cricketer Phillip Hughes did not make headline news in Ghana.
In the cricket-playing world, however, Thursday, November 27, 2014, will forever remain a dark day in cricket history, a day of tragedy for the game.
Two days earlier on Tuesday, November 25 2014, while playing in a match in Sydney in his native Australia, the 25-year-old rising star in international cricket was struck by a ball on his neck.
He fell immediately and lost consciousness. Despite being promptly lifted by helicopter for surgery, he did not come out of unconsciousness.
He died on Thursday, November 27, 2014.
The effect of the impact of the ball on his neck has been likened to that sustained by a car racing driver on his head in a high-speed crash.
Bernice Offei’s song
Somehow, in recent times, I have developed an extra liking for the gospel musician Bernice Offei’s song Life is Short.
Apart from the impact of the melody on me, I find the words so apt.
In a very simple way, she reminds us and emphasises the shortness/transience of life — from birth, through adolescence to adulthood, old age and inevitably death. Probably that accounts for my recent near addiction to the song on YouTube.
...The tragic death of the 25-year-old Australian cricketer, Hughes, also reminded me of a regular song often sung during funeral church services, “It is well with my soul”. The song, which was composed by Philip Bliss, was based on a tragedy that befell an American family in the early 1870s.
Horatio Spafford was a very well-known and wealthy lawyer in Chicago, Illinois, USA. In 1870, he lost his only son, aged four, to scarlet fever.
Soon after that in 1871, a fire incident which became known as the Great Fire of Chicago completely burnt out his real estate property.
All his investments got wiped out. To take a break from these misfortunes, Spafford decided to go on a holiday in England with his family in 1873.
At the appointed time for departure, he got delayed by business.
He, therefore, sent his wife, Anna, and their four daughters ahead.
On November 22, 1873, while crossing the Atlantic in their ship, Ville de Havre, they were struck by another ship, the Loc Ean.
Two hundred and twenty-six people lost their lives, including all the four daughters of Mr and Mrs Spafford.
Anna Spafford miraculously survived.
On arrival in England, she sent her husband a telegram beginning with the words, “Saved Alone…..”
Spafford then set sail for England himself. It is said that it was when their ship got to the point of the accident and subsequent drowning of his daughters that Spafford wrote the words of the popular hymn, It is well with my soul.
2014
The year 2014 has not been a kind year. Too many times, I have heard Bernice Offei’s Life is Short, as well as Horatio Spafford/Philip Bliss’ It is Well with my Soul at funeral services.
Among the many who left us in 2014, my good friend and mate Brig. Gen. Richard Debrah was called to eternity at the age of 65. Another mate, Maj. George Sarpong, lost his elder brother, Maj. Charles Sarpong. He managed the biblical three score and ten!
Perhaps, more painful on account of their relative youth were the deaths of two 35-year-old youngsters. ‘Chief’, the son of my mate, Brig. Gen. Emmanuel Okyere was called to eternity.
In September 2014, my wife and I had to travel to Warri, Delta State of Nigeria, for the funeral of the 35-year-old daughter of our family friends, Brig. Gen. and Mrs Dominic Oneya, cold-bloodedly murdered by armed robbers! This was only two weeks after she had visited us here in Accra.
Discussion
The deaths of Nana Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng at 74, Professor Konotey-Ahulu at 94 and Ngugi Wa Thiongo at 87, at relatively mature ages, above the Biblical three-score-and-ten, with their integrity intact, feed into earlier narratives that “a good name is better than riches.”
So, why the greed on the part of politicians grabbing everything in sight like they will live forever?
Then, lip service will be paid to fighting “galamsey” while it is left alone to kill Ghanaians, slowly poisoning water bodies and the food chain as greedy pockets are lined!
The question the Chinese ambassador once asked was, “How come South Africans (and Nigerians) do not allow galamsey by foreigners in their countries like Ghanaians do?”
Where is the patriotism Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah taught us as proud Ghanaians?
As often asked on the radio, what kind of people are we who will remove bolts and nuts on Tema-Mpakadan rail tracks and iron rods from concrete structures/bridges at Achimota?
May the souls of Ghanaians Nana Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng and Prof. Konotey-Ahulu, and Kenya’s Ngugi Wa Thiongo rest in peace!
Leadership, lead by example! Fellow Ghanaians, wake up!
The writer is a former CEO, African Peace Support Trainers Association
Nairobi, Kenya; Council Chairman, Family Health University,
Teshie, Accra
E-mail: dkfrimpong@yahoo.com
