Kofi Annan has been laid to rest in his native Ghana as world leaders paid tributes to the former UN secretary general with calls to keep alive the legacy of a “stubborn optimist” to create a better, more peaceful world.
At the funeral on Thursday, Annan’s widow, Nane Maria, led hundreds of mourners, including world leaders past and present, traditional rulers and global royalty, and called her husband an “extraordinary” person who had a “joy of life”.
“My love, you are now back home where you started your long journey. But may your wisdom and compassion continue to guide us, wherever we are,” she said at the state funeral in the capital, Accra.
Annan led the UN from 1997 to 2006, becoming the first person from sub-Saharan Africa to do so. He died on August 18 aged 80 at his home in Switzerland after a short illness.
Thousands of people have filed past his coffin this week during three days of national mourning for Annan who was called “one of the truly iconic figures of modern times” by Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo.
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Many ordinary Ghanaians described him as a father-figure and a source of national pride, while his brother, Kobina, told the congregation that he was not just a leader and statesman.
“We lost a brother, a husband, a father, a grandfather and an uncle, a man of deep conviction who was as committed to instilling the values of fairness, integrity, kindness, and service in each of us as he advocated for peace and human rights around the world,” said Kobina.
The current UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, praised his close friend as an “exceptional global leader” who was dignified, courageous and a man of “integrity, dynamism and dedication”.
“Kofi Annan was the United Nations and the United Nations was him,” he added.
Annan, who was originally from Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti region in southern Ghana, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.
Rip
Rest In Peace my African hero
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#KOFIANNAN, GOODNIGHT SIR
Sir, you and several other departed and living legends of Africa like Nelson Mandela, Muammar Gaddafi, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Anthony Enahoro, Murtala Muhammed, Kwame Nkrumah, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Cheikh Anta Diop, Julius Nyerere, Chinua Achebe, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Dora Akunyili, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, Akinwunmi “Akin” Adesina, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Amina J. Muhammed among many other great sons and daughters of Africa give many of us hope of a better Africa. Your demise is quite painful but rather than grief, we celebrate you. You made us proud. We would have loved to have you around longer as another rare living example for many of our current misfits who manipulated their ways to leadership positions in Africa but we have no power over death.
Sir, relay your first hand experience of the Africa you left to our founding fathers. Do not forget to add that those who never bore arms nor showed any resistance to colonialism. Those who never struggled for African independence, those who have poor knowledge of our history, those who primitively accumulate the wealth their great great grand children cannot exhaust, those who do not know where the shoe itches, those who embrace neo-colonialism and those who are fatally desperate to rule have taken over the Africa they died for.
Tell them that Africans are no longer their brother’s keepers. Ujamaa of Nyerere seems never to be practised in Africa. Senghor’s Negritude has long left our shores. Africans that were mere spectators and victims of forceful enlistment into Europeans wars now sleep and wake in the pool of his brother’s blood. Terrorism has been brought to Africa. It is threatening the continent’s continuous existence. Tell Madiba that South Africans kill fellow Africans. Tell Gaddafi that Libyans now enslave their brothers. We stand the desert, defy death to escape the glaring death at home to escape to Europe. Many Africans are now refugees and IDPs. Tell Zik that massacres are ongoing unchecked in Nigeria. Democratic Republic of Congo’s material resources are tearing the country apart. Sudan has split. Ethiopia and Eritrea are now friends. Tell Mandela that his friends are still presidents. They have refused to Let the young grow.
Most importantly, tell them that Barack Obama, our son became the first African to be American President which our sons, Martin Luther Kings struggled for but Africa did not feel his presidency for good. Rather, he used his position to bring us down that we appear unable to recover from the trauma.
Sir, you have a lot to tell our founding fathers. African dream remains unrealistic.
Sadly, frankly tell them that with all you saw and experienced, Africa might go into extinction in a matter of time.
But we remain hopeful. Though we the coming generation are very weak due to poor nursing, poor grooming and intentional exclusion from governance. But we will neither retreat nor surrender!
Rest on sir.
Rip
Good night to a fellow of peace