Grieving Accra residents await the final journey of Rawlings

Many grieving residents clad in black are anxiously waiting along the principal streets of Accra to witness the final journey of former President Jerry John Rawlings.

The mortal remains of the former President will be paraded through the streets of Accra before interment at the Military cemetery at Burma Camp, Accra.

A trader at the Arts Centre who had abandoned his wares to join the many who waited on the John Evans Atta Mills High street said the: “Former President Jerry John Rawlings has always been his role model and his death came as a shock to me.”

Mr Eddie Ray said, "Rawlings was my role model because growing up, I wanted to be a military man and be like him. He had the country at heart and did everything he did for the interest of the country. So if today he’s no more, it’s the responsibility of us as Ghanaians to pay our last respect to him.”

Others just nodded as they stood still. Others wept and comforted each other.

Some traders used the occasion to sell items embossed with his portrait and other paraphernalia like T-shirts, books, pen drive among others.

Madam Paulina Nyani, a trader, told GNA that the sale of his paraphernalia like the books and pen drives would give the next generation a little knowledge about the former president and how great he was.



“We saw this as an opportunity to make money and not only that but also to offer the next generation books and videos gathered on the pen drive, a little knowledge about the former president,” she added.

The canon carrier which will bear the body of their hero through the principal streets of Accra to eternity rests at the Independence Square in a distance, where mourners have gathered to bid farewell