Presidential Candidate Admits To Extra Marital Affair

The Vice President and flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Professor John Evans Atta Mills yesterday admitted in a live radio interview that he has a son born out of wedlock (an extra-marital affair). The Vice President who had all along been perceived as someone with a squeaky clean image in whose mouth butter could not melt had been forced to make this public admission after the independent press came out with the revelation on election day.

News had also filtered out that the opposition parties were going to make it a legitimate campaign issue.

In Cape Coast, Chronicle investigators had already carried out surveillance at Third Ridge residence of the Veep with his sisters and located his son, following up with an interview with Mrs. Emma Afful, the sister of the Prof who confirmed that the little boy, Papa Sam, an athletic lad like his father was indeed her brother's son.

'In Cape Coast, nobody would believe you if you tell them that Atta -Mills has a son, they have been making it a campaign issue here and called him all sorts of names', Chronicle correspondents in Cape Coast warned our roving team Sarah and Raymond Archer nearly two weeks ago.

Chronicle has appropriate photographic shots taken invisibly. Mrs. Afful, a respected teacher at OLA School at Cape Coast was with Mr. Don Arthur, one of the NDC's intelligence chiefs and shadow Minister during the conversation at which it emerged that Mills sisters had actually lived with the father of Chronicle publisher Kofi Coomson when the latter was a kid in the days when his father was a District Commissioner in the Nkrumah regime. Though Mrs. Afful was reticent, she reluctantly acknowledged the fact and hinted that the mother of Papa Sam had remarried and now lives abroad.

On radio yesterday Mills explained that his recourse to the act of marital infidelity was carried out with the knowledge and encouragement from his wife, Mrs. Ernerstina Naadu Mills. He said that having been married for many years without an issue he took that decision in consultation with his wife that he should try 'elsewhere' for a child, he told his interview on VIBE-FM a popular private radio station in Accra.

He also denied allegations that his wife, Naadu, has denied the boy access to his father ever since he was a baby. According to the Vice President, who goes into a presidential run-off as an underdog against Mr. John Agyekum Kufuor on December 28, said the only reason why his son does not stay with him is that he wants the boy to grow up a Fante.

He explained that the son could have stayed with him on the University of Ghana, Legon campus where he was once a teacher, but due to the fact that there was nobody who could take care of his son in their absence, his sister asked that the boy be brought over to Cape Coast to continue his education. In addition as he said the boy would have grown up a proper Fante.

CHRONICLE investigations and files on this subject yet unpublished varies with the Veep's account and his ebusuapanyin Mr. Kwesi Brew who is a very senior and national executive of the NPP has also strenuously tried to close the lid on the Atta Mills scandal. When asked by the host why he had always been silent over this child preferring to remain silent about the existence of the boy, Mills said he never thought the fact of his infidelity could ever be an issue to be exploited by his political opponents.

This was the case in the Central Region where his opponents made constant references to it. While some held that he could not father a child, others insisted that the tax law expert has been hiding the fact that he has a child outside marriage from the public. He admitted that one of his opponents raised this as a campaign issue in one of the constituencies in the Afram Plains.

The interview by Kwaku Sintim Misah a well known radio presenter in Accra was simultaneously carried live by another private radio station, Radio Gold, belonging to the Ahwois and another Mills financier, Mr.Kwame Addo. Political analysts see the interview as a last minute rescue effort by NDC strategists to shore up Mills' rapidly diminishing public support in the countdown to the crucial presidential. Callers rather largely villified the Veep for hiding his son and keeping him in Cape Coast while others like Rawlings flew theirs out.

The interview, a carefully choreographed show did not redeem the Veep as planned because several callers including those claiming to be NDC callers lashed out at the Veep's inclusion of men like lhaji Isaaka Inusah and Obed Asamoah in his team and the existence of E.T. Mensah in his Government. Still others -NDC sympathisers thought he should give up and spend the c15 billion that was going to fund the second round into developing a university.

The state-owned Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, GBC, also quoted copiously from the interview including actualities for its prime time newscast yesterday. Information available to the Chronicle says the ex-girlfriend of Vice president Mill is now domiciled in London.