Ghana’s new president: example of how the letters prepare true leaders – not by accident – for leadership challenge

About two weeks before the death of former Ghanaian President, John Atta Mills, his Vice (now president) John Dramani Mahama proved the importance of the letters in leadership as he promoted his memoir My First Coup D’état: And Other True Stories From the Lost Decades of Africa, in New York, U.S.

It’s a 138-page book published by a U.S.-based group, Bloomsbury, with typeset by Westchester Book.

According to sources, renowned author Chinua Achebe described the book as “A much welcome work of immense relevance.”

President John Dramani Mahama

One of the sources, New Africa Media quoted Mahama: “A lot of people who have written about Africa write about the pre-colonial struggle for independence, or postcolonial period. But the "lost decades" was the period that set the stage and created a platform for the progress that we're seeing today. We learned from experiences of the coups d'état, from the droughts and from the brutality of the era. So (now) there is a strong sense of protecting human rights in Africa today; A strong sense of (the value) of a constitutional government; A strong sense of rule of law. So the era was a catalyst for the improvements we're seeing today.”

Another source said the celebrated African author of Weep Not, Child, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, described the book as luring the president “into an unforgettable journey in which he interacts with history as a living tissue. The characters and the episodes are part of the everyday but one imbued with magic and suggestive power that goes beyond the concrete and the palpable to hit at history in motion”.