The remains of Dr Kwabena Adjei, a former National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), was laid to rest on Saturday at Nkonya, in the Biakoye District of the Oti Region.
Earlier, Parliament bid farewell to the NDC stalwart, who was also a former Majority Leader, at a solemn pre-burial service at the forecourt of the House, where he was laid in state, in Accra, on Friday.
At a short pre-burial ceremony, the Speaker of Parliament, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye, led the lawmakers to eulogise the late Dr Adjei, who also served as an Agriculture Minister under the presidency of Jerry Rawlings.
The Speaker vouched for the anti-corruption stance of the late Dr Adjei, who was a former Member of Parliament for Biakoye, and urged politicians to emulate his exemplary life.
Prof. Oquaye said “Dr Kwabena Adjei, Honourable, was a voice and actor of moderation in our politics at one time. The dichotomy in Ghanaian politics sometimes pains me. We take stance and we are like parallel lines. I think his virtue should remind us that (we are to serve).
The Speaker stressed that “He was not corrupt. I follow Ghanaian politics and I am (saying) this in public. He was not corrupt. It’s a quality we need for men and women in public life.”
The Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, in his eulogy described Dr Adjei as a man with strong convictions, adding “he had ownership of his convictions and when he believed he was right, he was uncompromising with his convictions.”
Mr Iddrisu, said legacies of the late Dr Adjei, which would live long, included the Forestry Development Master Plan, which led to the harvesting of teak trees, to support rural electrification, and how he used the Ghana Education Trust Fund as the vehicle to “improve access and quality of education”.
Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, who worked with Dr Adjei, described him as a hardworking and argumentative personality, who argued from positions of principle and “if he saw superior argument, he buys into that.”
The Majority Leader said the late Dr Adjei was a humble person, who dealt with anyone irrespective of their status in society, and “gave his all to Ghana in the services he rendered to the country.”
The General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, who served under the Chairmanship of the late Dr Adjei, as Secretary, said his former ‘boss’ would be remembered for his good deeds.
The NDC General Secretary said “we were the ministers, who didn’t know how to make money. So at that stage, we didn’t have money to campaign. So I asked ‘Dr, how are we going to campaign?'”
Mr Nketia recounted “Then he said, ‘well let us combine our forces like Captain Planet,’” adding that they executed their campaign enroute their victory at the party’s Koforidua Congress, in 2005.
“Besides being his General Secretary, I have been a personal friend. Even on the occasion where there was every indication that he was going to lose the (2015) election as national chairman, I stood by him, and said whether he remained national chairman or not, our friendship will remain till death does us part,” Mr Nketia said.
BY JULIUS YAO PETETSI
