President John Dramani Mahama has vowed to honour the memory of the eight victims of the August 6 military helicopter crash by safeguarding the future of their children and ensuring the success of his government’s “reset agenda.”
Speaking at the third-day funeral rites (Adua) of Alhaji Muniru Limuna Mohammed on Tuesday, August 12, the President announced plans for a special Education Fund to be unveiled at the state funeral on Friday, August 15, at the Black Star Square.
“There will be a state funeral on Friday, 15th August. At the funeral, we will announce some programmes for creating a fund that will assist with the education of the children,” he said.
“Friday, I will announce the details of that, so that people who want to contribute to the future of the children they have left behind will have the opportunity to do so.”
Reflecting on the tragedy, the President described the loss as “a difficult calamity,” noting that the deceased were in the prime of their lives and carried great responsibilities.
“If you look at all those who died, they were at the prime of their lives and had so much responsibility, children still in school, and some even with infants as young as two months.
“The pilot has a child two months old, and these responsibilities… are what we have to take up to make sure that the absence of the parents does not adversely affect the innocent children,” he stated.
President Mahama further called for renewed commitment to the nation’s development in honour of the fallen.
“What we have to do is to work even harder in their memories, because all of them were key champions of the reset agenda that we are pursuing as a government. The reset agenda must be successful in their memory so that their deaths would not have been in vain.”
