Ghanaians mourn Kofi Awoonor

People from all walks of live have visited the Accra residence of Professor Kofi Awoonor, former Chairman of the Council of State, who died in Nairobi, Kenya last Saturday September 21, to express their  condolences.

 According to a Ghana News Agency source family members had flown to Nairobi to bring home the mortal remains of Prof Awoonor who died in a shooting incident at the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi.

His son Afetsi who was also injured in the incident is recuperating in hospital.

Mr Felix Ofosu-Kwakye, a Deputy Minister for Information told the media that Government was arranging to bring the body of the late Professor to Ghana for burial.

President John Mahama on his way to New York, described as a sad twist of fate, Prof Awoonor's demise at the Nairobi Mall where more than 60 shoppers were killed.

"I am shocked to hear the death of Prof Kofi Awoonor in Nairobi,” he said.

President Mahama said such a sad twist of fate placed the Professor at the wrong place at the wrong time.

He said Prof Awoonor would be sorely missed by family, friends, and National Democratic Congress of which he was a committed member.  

 

Awoonor, 78, was killed while shopping with his son in the Westgate mall, Ghana’s Deputy Information Minister Felix Kwakye Ofosu said.

His son was injured and has been discharged from the hospital, Ofosu said. Awoonor had been due to appear at the Storymoja Hay literary festival in Nairobi on Saturday.

Awoonor was Ghana’s representative to the United Nations under the presidency of Jerry Rawlings from 1990 to 1994, and was also president of the Council of State, an advisory body to the president. He stepped down from that role earlier this year.

He was a renowned writer, most notably for his poetry inspired by the oral tradition of the Ewe people, to which he belonged.

Much of his best work was published in Ghana’s immediate post-independence period, part of which he spent in exile after the first president Kwame Nkrumah, whom Awoonor was close to, was overthrown in a coup.

His books included “Rediscovery and Other Poems,” published in 1964.
Awoonor returned to Ghana in 1975 and was later arrested and tried over his suspected involvement in a coup, according to a biography from the US-based Poetry Foundation.

He was released after 10 months, and the foundation said his imprisonment influenced his book “The House by the Sea”.

During his time in the United States in the early 1970s, Awoonor was chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

He was also Ghana’s ambassador to Brazil and Cuba in the 1980s, the foundation said.

Source: GNA & Capital News