Brother of the late Professor John Evans Atta Mills, Dr Cadman Atta Mills, has passionately recounted how the NDC practically killed the former President due to their insistence to hide the fact that he was sick and needed urgent medical treatment.

Cadman Mills spoke to Bola Ray on Starr Chat Wednesday and revealed what has long been suspended, that NDC bigwigs put political expediency above the health of the former President, who was very sick at the time.

He said Mills ailments started in 2005, and thus he needed regular check ups.

“My brother got very sick and was in South Africa in 2005 and he had treatment in South Africa and part of the effect of the treatment that he had was that progressively it affected his vision and affected his hearing a little bit. Otherwise, the treatment was extremely successful and he was getting progressively better.

“The only problem he had was [with] his vision and even that was getting better with time. We were very conscious of the sickness he had in 2005, and, therefore, he regularly had medical checkups to confirm that everything was ok,”

But when the illness returned in the run-up to the 2012 elections, the party felt revealing it would be politically disadvantageous so he had to pretend he was well to the public.

“He’s not somebody who will hide things, but for some strange reason, they decided that politically it was not allowable for people to know that he was sick. …Before that I went to China and when I came back I couldn’t recognise my brother, he was not even coherent. He was very visibly sick and I’d never seen him like that before and I said we had to evacuate him immediately”

“We had to go to the U.S and that is when they started telling me that elections are going to be soon and politically it was not right. I told them my peace of mind and I decided we had to go to the USA. What really got me furious was that they said he was going to the U.S for a routine medical checkup and I said what are you people talking about. My brother is a human being, he’s not well.

“I wanted him to take the time necessary to get well. The fact of your being a president doesn’t mean you don’t get sick and what is political about getting sick but you see the narrative had been developed for a long time that he was a very sick man, he was on the verge of death at any given time, all of these were not true.

“Whatever got him ill, was it in April or May, was something I’d never seen before. Surely enough we went to the US and lucky enough they detected very quickly what’s causing it and he got much better. I was very angry with him when he came back and he wanted to show everybody that he was well. …I confronted him on a lot of things including that.”

When asked who the ‘they’ he kept referring to was, Mills refused to name anyone, instead implying it was the party’s top brass making the decisions.

The late President Mills ruled Ghana from January 7 2009 till his death on the 24th of July, 2012. His term was seen out by his vice, John Mahama.