President John Dramani Mahama recently paid a historic four-day official state visit to Jamaica, where he took the opportunity to meet the Ghanaian community at Seville Heritage Park in St Ann.

During the meeting, President Mahama invited Jamaican sprint legend Asafa Powell to Ghana as a special guest for the country’s interschool athletics competition.

In his invitation speech, the president jokingly reminded the sprint legend of the benefit Ghana has been to him by giving him his wife, Alyshia Miller-Powell.

The president asserted that because of Powell’s marriage to a Ghanaian, he has no choice but to accept the invitation.

"Indeed, we have already virtually commanded him to visit Ghana. He has already benefited from Ghana with his lovely wife. But we are now going to put him to work. And so, we have exchanged numbers, and we are inviting him to Ghana,” he said.

Mahama said that he was the sprint legend to mentor these young athletes to be great as he was or even better.

“We have a youth sports meet where inter-colleges do a national competition. We want somebody like Asafa to come and inspire our young people in the area of sports. When it’s the season for that sports festival, we will invite him as a special guest to come and inspire our young people to be faster than him," he added.

Powell is one of Jamaica's most accomplished sprinters. He broke the 100m world record with a time of 9.77 seconds in 2005 before lowering it to 9.74 seconds in 2007.

He also won Olympic gold as part of Jamaica's 4x100m relay team at the 2008 Beijing Games.

Asafa Powell set to headline Ghana’s next intercollegiate sports competition

Watch a video of the president's remarks below:



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