The death of the late Major Maxwell Adam Mahama has been a blessing in disguise as it paved the way for a family reunion.
Captain Dennis Mahama Adam (Retired), who gave a chronology of events on Tumu-based Radford Fm, said the situation has brought the Sissala community and the public in getting up close with the family that has been hit by this unfortunate tragedy.
A full detailed account of how the unfortunate incident resulted in a family union is reproduced below;
“I got to know Sissala land in my mid-thirties. The story is that my father is one of the earliest persons who travelled down south at a tender age and settled in Bole.
Whilst there, my mother had been married to a chief but she was being maltreated, so her father took her back.
My father saw her and they became lovers and eventually got pregnant. Fearing for his life for my mother being the daughter of a chief, they both bolted to Kpandai in the Northern Region.
My grandfather asked my mother to return through a cousin but my mother had delivered me and pleaded for more days to come over, so they fled Kpandai to Accra after noticing their whereabouts had been made public.
Unfortunately, my mother’s father died and she was needed back home in Bole. My father was still then afraid, for fear he won’t have me again so he secretly took me to Madina in Accra where I was given tribal marks by a Sissala woman to show I am a Sissala in case I don’t return my identity will not be in doubt.
True to his thoughts we never met until a long time. Eventually, my mother took me to Bole and after three years my mother remarried since her family had disapproved of her earlier relationship with my father.
I was also disinherited by my step father who did not want my mother to come to the marriage with me. I was sent to my aunty in a village called Sanjari close to the Cote D’voire border.
I became a shepherd until a CPP rally brought one late B.A. Saaka an uncle who was a District commissioner of Bole in the 1960s and upon hearing my situation from my mother brought me to Bole to start school after he found out I could be bright.
I was herding cattle and the commissioner asked that they brought me back to Bole to enroll in school. I started school in 1960 whilst living in his house.
That was where I got to know and mingled with the former president John Dramani Mahama whose father was then the Regional Commissioner under Dr. Kwame Nkrumah`s era.
My education began so well until the 1966 coup affected my uncle. This became another era of struggle, on how to do my ‘O’ levels and ‘A’ levels.
All this while, I did not have anything to do with the Sissalas even though I knew a few of them.
During cultural events you will see me join the Gonjas and this continued until I joined the army in 1977 and since then life became a little comfortable where I started to give back to my family’ .
“One day I returned from Sunyani and saw that my mother looked very morose.
I asked why she was and in her response asked if I knew my father. I pondered over the issue for several days and could not sleep but told her the time I needed to know my father has passed and I don’t need to know.
I know you and it’s enough. My mum shouted and said she has heard people say in spite of all the things I have been able to do I still do not know my real father.
She gave me the leads to Mamobi in Accra and from then I was taken to a Sissala family where I was led to a place where my father lived in 1984 almost over three decades.
I linked up with the lead persons and my efforts brought what happened. I went and met my father very old and weak and on pension. It was not a good scene where I saw him around Awudome cemetery in Accra. He lived like a pauper and I was sad. When I met him first, he asked me in Gonja are you Janabas son, I said yes. He then explained to me why he gave me the tribal marks indicating that he did not want to lose me.
Something run through me at that point, he never also married again making me the only son of my father on earth. He thanked God for seeing me after a long while. I told him, I wanted to take him away to show me where his family is and where he comes from.
With time and encouragement from my wife, we moved him to Sunyani where I worked and made him comfortable through my wife who had a wonderful relationship with my dad.
Later we moved to Bole and until he was brought to Yigantu his hometown to settle until his death.
Captain Dennis Mahama Adam (Retired) observed that the final funeral rites paved the way for other family members who hitherto were also missing to return home commending the President, his Vice, the military high command, chiefs and stakeholders for their contributions in cash and kind.
