Five nurses vanished. Two army captains shook hands. And a nation still waits for answers.
By Gifty Boateng
More than five years after former President Jerry John Rawlings died at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, a founding father of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has dropped a bombshell that threatens to tear open one of Ghana’s most sensitive political mysteries.
Dr Nyaho Nyaho Tamakloe, a statesman and retired military officer, is no longer whispering. He is declaring: Rawlings did not die a natural death.
In a viral interview, Tamakloe laid out a chilling sequence of events that he says points to a well-planned elimination not COVID-19, not illness, but something far darker.
The nurses who disappeared
First bombshell: the five nurses stationed at the VIP section to care for Rawlings. According to Tamakloe, the moment the former president drew his last breath on 12 November 2020, the nurses vanished.
“They were taken out of the country,” he said. “If the nurses are around, they should come forward.”
None have. Tamakloe, a retired soldier himself, says their sudden relocation abroad with no trace cannot be coincidence.
‘Mission accomplished’
Second bombshell: two serving army captains. Tamakloe says he knows them personally. Immediately after Rawlings’ death, they met, shook hands, and uttered two words that have haunted him ever since.
“Mission accomplished.”
“That means a lot,” Tamakloe stressed. “It’s a military phrase. That means a lot.”
He is holding their names for now but he has called on the government to set up an independent commission of inquiry. The response so far? “Absolutely nothing.”
Not COVID, not natural
Rawlings died at age 73, just three weeks after burying his mother, and barely a month before the 2020 general election. At the time, rumours swirled of coronavirus. Tamakloe dismisses that outright.
“Rawlings, to me, didn’t die through COVID. Who planned and had Rawlings eliminated one day will come out.”
The strange political bedfellows
The late president, founder of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), had spent years at war with the NPP. But in his final years, something shifted. Rawlings suddenly befriended then-President Akufo-Addo the same man who, as Foreign Minister under Kufuor, had allegedly stripped Rawlings of his ex-president courtesies. The same man Rawlings had once derided on campaign platforms.
Critics warned the Rawlings family to tread carefully. Some NDC sympathisers now whisper that Rawlings was silenced before he could boom again because he was preparing to speak his mind on corruption and “naked thievery” in high places.
A wife also gone
Rawlings’ widow, former First Lady Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, died in October 2025. With her passing, an entire political era closed. But the questions around her husband’s death have not.
Tamakloe’s challenge
The NPP stalwart is not backing down. He has repeated his demand for a full inquiry. “The only thing I will say is that I have had calls from prominent people thanking me for having the courage to come out.”
Courage, yes. But also a reopening of wounds that many in power would prefer to leave sealed.
For now, the nurses are gone, the captains’ handshake is a memory, and the government is silent. But Tamakloe’s words have ensured that the ghost of Chairman Rawlings will not rest quietly.