Mrs Agyeman-Rawlings was more than she was thought to be - Napoleon Ato Kittoe of GBC's tribute
As I pay tribute to one of Ghana's leading icons, I am overwhelmed with grief.
We are teary in the untimely passing of this illustrious matriarch, even though she was only a month short of 77 years of life.
It is her physical existence that has petered out but not her ideals and spirit. Her legacy would endure forever owing to its centrality in the affairs of men.
The outpouring of grief since the shocking announcement rang out on Thursday, October 23, 2025, that she had passed on suppresses the other items which compete for public attention.
I had wished our mother, Her Excellency, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings was alive to witness the immense show of love for her.
When an eerie silence hanged over her after the burial of her husband, President Jerry John Rawlings, in 2021, some thought she was finished and had become irrelevant.
How sad that observation was.
In Ghana, she was the person who was celebrated most after the world converged on Beijing in 2025 to review the gender affirmative action adopted 30 years ago.
Well, it is undeniable she rode on the back of her husband to prominence, but then, her own fame stemmed from niche she carved for herself as a fighter or strong advocator of women's rights.
Largely, that set her apart from preceding and succeeding generations.
Her legacy is unquestionably towering among the matriarchs, and that is probably the reason President John Dramani Mahama named Ghana's leading monument, the Black Star Square, as the venue of her funeral.
In my lifetime, only two Presidents were mourned at this square - her husband, former President Rawlings in 2021.
Earlier in 2012, it had been the then sitting President John Evans Atta Mills. So toeing this path announces Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings as big.
Principles
In most of my tét a tét with Her Excellency Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, she explained her political drift to be the unflinching quest to uphold, protect, and promote the cardinal principles and values of the National Democratic Congress, NDC, as the new leaders who took control of the party blurred the lines with their own variants of the philosophies behind the party's creation.
The former first couple of Ghana was avowedly addicted to the slogans - Probity, Accountability, and Integrity.
The political dynamics, deeply affected by her involvement, they appeared to draw a peripeteia on her political ambitions.
The NDC would be at crossroads - she at the receiving end of heavy criticisms, allegedly for inciting her husband to leave the NDC. Was this the actual picture? Listening to her, it became clear to me that such a countenance was borne out of misinterpretation.
She told me, she formed the National Democratic Party, NDP, not to weaken the NDC but exploit the equal chance of capturing power to resolutely lead the fight against corruption.
In 2008, she became the presidential candidate of her party, its historicity being Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings as the first woman presidential candidate in Ghana.
To have the pulse to vie for the coveted presidency of Ghana requires the combination of self-belief, natural wisdom and academic knowledge, vast experience in public service, international stature, and respectable levels of fluency in both the official and the most widely-spoken local language - English and Akan respectively.
