{{Former Ghana president John Atta Mills has finally been laid to rest.<\/p>\n
His body lay in state early Friday, for a third straight day, for a final viewing before being placed in a black limousine for the short drive to the funeral site under military guard.}}<\/p>\n
Thousands of mourners from presidents and dignitaries to ordinary Ghanaians arrived in the capital’s Independence Square on Friday for the funeral of former President John Atta Mills.<\/p>\n
Among those who viewed Mills’ body before the service were Cote d’Ivoire President Alassane Ouattara, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia as well as the leaders of Benin and neighbouring Togo.<\/p>\n
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also attended the funeral.<\/p>\n
“He was like a brother to me. I will surely miss him,” Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe told journalists.<\/p>\n
Benin’s leader, also the current African Union chairman, Thomas Boni Yayi, described Mills as “passionate about peace in Africa and in the region.”<\/p>\n
His death on July 24 following an illness came as a shock to many Ghanaians, despite rumours that he had been sick and reports that he suffered from throat cancer.<\/p>\n
Mills’s death just five months ahead of polls in which he was to seek re-election upended the presidential race in a country that recently became a significant oil producer and is praised as a stable democracy in an often turbulent region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Former Ghana president John Atta Mills has finally been laid to rest. His body lay in state early Friday, for a third straight day, for a final viewing before being placed in a black limousine for the short drive to the funeral site under military guard.}} Thousands of mourners from presidents and dignitaries to ordinary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[334],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-2867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2867"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=2867"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=2867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}