President John Mahama yesterday May 22 warmly welcomed Vice President Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang back to Ghana following her weeks-long medical leave abroad, describing her return as both “reassuring and politically significant.”
The President’s remarks came during a high-profile reception at Kotoka International Airport, where he was joined by First Lady Lordina Mahama, Chief of Staff Julius Debrah, Finance Minister Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, and a host of senior government officials.
President Mahama expressed deep relief at the Vice President’s return, underscoring the void her absence had created within the administration.
He openly admitted that her unavailability had complicated governance, to the point that even his own brief official trip to Togo had drawn threats of impeachment from the opposition.
“I particularly have missed you, because even travelling out of the country has been difficult; they’ve threatened to impeach me for going to Togo while you were away,” President Mahama said, referencing recent political turbulence.
“So I’m the most excited to have you back, so you’re warmly welcome.”
The President’s comments mark his first official response to criticisms from the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), which had raised concerns about a constitutional vacuum during a period when both the Vice President and the Speaker of Parliament were also out of the country.
The Minority led by Suame member of Parliament John Darko had argued that the absence of all three key officeholders without the Chief Justice being appointed to act as President violated Article 60 of the 1992 Constitution.
President Mahama took the opportunity to publicly commend her dedication and the groundwork she had laid prior to her departure.
“Since you left your colleagues, we’ve all missed you. We held the 120-day social contract programme, and everybody said you should have been there, but with all the work you did before you went, we continued, and I think that we were able to present to the people of Ghana a significant percentage of the things that we had promised. But in all this, you were missed,” the President stated.
President Mahama also used the occasion to call for long-term investment in the country’s healthcare infrastructure.
He pointed to the University of Ghana Medical Centre (UGMC) as a critical facility that remains underutilized and under-equipped to handle complex medical emergencies.
“This raises the issues of us improving our healthcare so that we can handle emergencies like this. We built a quintessential hospital, which is the UGMC, but it’s still not at the stage where they can handle some of these cases, and so it’s a call to duty that we should implement it the way Professor Mills had intended it to be, so that in future, emergencies like this can be handled without us having to fly out,” President Mahama emphasized.
President Mahama revealed that medical professionals have declared the Vice President fully fit to resume her official duties.
In a lighter moment, he joked that she returned looking “20 years younger.”
However, he advised her to take a gradual approach as she reintegrates into her responsibilities.
“That’s what the professor told me, and that you are okay, and fit for the job, but I will ask that you take it easy for a little while. We’ll see how things go,” he said.
Source: www.kumasimail.com / Kwadwo Owusu
