Wife of the late John Kumah has relived fond memories of their relationship of nearly 20 years.
According to Apostle Lilian Kumah, she met Johnny (John Kumah) along the Malam Road in Accra, somewhere in 2005 and got married the following year.
“We met in Accra when I had just completed secondary school. I was working at the time, while he had also completed the University and working. My money fell into the gutter and he picked it for me. I bought plantain chips and he asked me to buy some for him.
I told him I had limited funds so I decided to share the chips with him. He visited me the following Sunday after church and we started a relationship. A year later, we got married. And we have been together for almost 18 years. He has been my mentor, my teacher through good and bad times,” she said in an interview with Accra-based Asaase Radio, March 11.
During the same interview, she dispelled rumours that her deceased husband died of food poisoning.
According to Apostle Lilian Kumah, her husband of 18 years has been sick since August last year.
The widow pointed out that he was diagnosed with a blood-related disease in Germany when she accompanied her husband for a medical check-up.
“Right from day one, since he was diagnosed in Germany, I have been part of the medical processes my husband went through, and no one, none of the doctors ever told me that my husband’s medical situation was because of poisoning.
“I have all the medical reports both from Germany and Ghana and food poisoning has never been mentioned in any of the reports,” she said in an interview on Accra-Based Asaase Radio, March 11.
Touting the late Deputy Minister’s dedication to national duties, Apostle Kumah further stated, “My husband went through pain, but he never showed that he was in pain. He went through all the pain to do everything he needed to do during the period of his ill-health.
“He was motivated by a particular motto that he always operated by which is, ‘We don’t do what is convenient, we do what we are commanded to do’. So [despite] all the pain, he endured.
She therefore charged that law enforcement agencies to investigate the source of the allegation that her husband was poisoned.
“Why is it that someone has been this bold to claim that he knows for a fact that a person like John Kumah who has serviced his country virtually all his life, was poisoned, while he was working for his country and party (New Patriotic Party, NPP), why should we sit down and not bring that person to book.
“If it is true that a person who is not dead but alive claims that he knows how my husband (John Kumah) died and that he was poisoned, and that person is still moving around for the past three weeks, it hurts me, it saddens me, and I do not know how best to express my frustrations about these false claims by Captain Smart.
“If there are laws in this country concerning such false claims, I think this is the time for the leadership of the land to bring that wicked person to book to prove his false claims and to point out the persons who were involved in the poisoning of my late husband,” she urged.
John Kumah died aged 45 on Thursday, March 7. He is survived by a wife and six children.