When an old man dies, a library burns."

I am very young, in fact, I agree it would take the grace of God to reach seventy like former President Jerry John Rawlings, Founder of the NDC- BUT may it not be said of me that I was blessed to be seventy too, amassed the level of experiences, hindsight and acumen of the good former President Rawlings, and I celebrated my 70th birthday without any book to my name, either by myself, or a Biography I officially commissioned.

May this not be interpreted as a slight.

Though not satisfactory, if you've read the book, Former President J.A Kufuor officially commissioned Ivor Agyeman-Duah to write his biography.

Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria's leader for a combined period of eleven or twelve years has written his My Watch, almost 2000 pages of his experiences, in addition to other books he's written in the past.

Some heads of United States Departments who spent just three years there write books about that experience. Former US Presidents from whom African leaders gleefully "copied" the idea of Presidential Libraries write as a matter of necessity.

In Nigeria, even one-term Governors and Ministers are writing about their experiences. Goodluck Jonathan is writing his memoir after his defeat; we have seen My First Coup D'etat- we can only expect a second and possibly a third Coup D'etat- Dr Obed Y. Asamoah has done justice to his part of history, including narratives that only tell the former NDC National Chairman and Foreign Minister's side of the whole story.

We have a former President who is 70 years old today, who led us 19 of our 60 years as a nation, and has not written even one article that I know of, about his tenure, to guide others.

We are not even encouraging him to do so before anything happens, even as we pray he lives longer than the number of pages of the Memoir he is yet to write, because no one is looking forward to less than a 300 page book.

Nkrumah's strength was that he wrote. That's why he could on firm certainty say that long after he was gone, his torch will blaze and offer liberation and guidance to generations to come. We know too well the story of Nkrumah not so much from the incendiary propaganda of his opponents, than from his own writing.

A hundred years from today, when those who come after us meet the need to celebrate H.E Former President JJR, they may make do with books whose authors JJR when alive castigated for writing falsehood and of dubious credibilities, google opinionated article pieces, and some "boom" speeches delivered yearly to applause, that may not alone reflect what JJR stood for, for that generation's understanding, and the cause of this, of course, will be the Lion who might have rejected the offer of a pen as disrespect, at a time some vindictive hunters were at a printing press scheming to ambush the PNDC/NDC section of the history of Ghana regards the proper role and legacy of the man celebrating his 70th birthday today.

Recently, there was a revisit of the exposé that Rawlings had, as President received 5million dollars from Abacha through one Gwarzo, the man who those familiar with Nigerian autobiographies will identify as the man who spear-headed the sharing of almost 200 million dollars to West African leaders to push an agenda that will see Abacha get support as ECOWAS Chair at the Abuja Summit of '96, something that only came to light after the death of the Dictator.

We do not know for sure, how and why our former President Rawlings was given the said 5million, sorry, 2m dollars, which because he's alive he clarified, and well, we can't even begin to insinuate anything...

Again we don't know if the information on both sides of the 5m dollars is accurate since Neither Abacha nor Rawlings had written about the issue in advance of its reemergence.

Rawlings only spoke to the issue for the first time in that Nigerian interview to The Guardian Newspaper.

What our former President did in that interview, is what a good, all-rounded memoir does to the legacy of a revolutionary- it speaks for itself- and the words live forever.

There is no better occasion to remind H.E JJR to write, and let him know how uninspiring it is for him to go to court seeking Injunctions to restrain those who write about him as having breached some agreement, when he himself has written nothing; there is no better time than now, at this very moment to tell him that Truth.

Happy birthday Sir, Founder of the Great NDC, a prosperous and fulfilling Legacy- but Sir, you should write.

This to me, should be a more befitting birthday message for a 70 year old statesman, Founder of the Great NDC, who himself commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the founding of the NDC at Ashaiman in Accra called for Truth and sincerity as the way forward.

These, I am humbled to say, are my sincere thoughts; here is to seventy years of revolutionary zeal, truth, patriotism and candour!

Sincerely yours,

Mohammed, Mikdad