Times, Govt, NMC Delegation Calls On Family Of Samuel Nuamah

Grief and shock have gripped the family of Samuel Nuamah following his sudden death in an accident on the Akosombo-Tema highway last Thursday. During a visit to the family�s residence at Teshie in Accra yesterday, some members were seen sobbing while others looked very sorrowful. Mr Nuamah died on the spot, while 11 other reporters attached to the Presidency at the Flagstaff House sustained varying degrees of injury when a Ford bus on which they were travelling burst a tyre, veered off the road and landed in a swampy area near the Shai Hills Resource Reserve on the Akosombo-Tema highway. In separate interviews with the Daily Graphic, the family members described Nuamah�s death as a big blow to the family. They said Nuamah, a journalist with the New Times Corporation, was the breadwinner of the family as he was responsible for the upkeep of the home and other responsibilities, including the payment of school fees for his siblings. �It is a big blow to the family. We are in a state of shock. We were not anticipating this untimely death,� Nuamah�s younger brother, Emmanuel, said. Speaking in a suppressed mood, Emmanuel said �we are going to miss him a lot. He was the breadwinner of the family. Everything is on me now�. Nuamah�s younger sister, Gifty, said she could not still come to terms with the death of her brother, whom she described as her best friend, in an accident � not that he had fallen ill. �Till today, I still didn�t believe that my brother is dead. The way he died is so bad. He was a cool man, and he suffered before he died,� she said while restraining her tears. She said it was Nuamah who encouraged her to enrol into the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) and implanted the love of communications in her heart. Nuamah was the one responsible for her school fees, saying, �He has been helping me with my finances.� The Daily Graphic team saw Nuamah�s parents, Mr John Maxwell Opoku and Mrs Georgina Opoku, seated together in a pensive mood, mourning the loss of their son. How the family got the tragic news Emmanuel said he had closed from work and was preparing for a church programme when he received a call from the New Times Corporation around 3:30 p.m. to come over. He said it was there the officials narrated the tragic incident to him. Thereafter, he said, they all went to the 37 Military Hospital to see the body. Gifty said she was with a friend, and all of a sudden she started receiving calls, but nobody would tell her what the issue was. She said when she finally called her mother, she disclosed to her that her brother, Samuel, had passed on in a car accident, and that he was the only one who didn�t survive. �I screamed aloud. He was the only one who died sounded weird to me. I did not know how to find my way home,� she said while shaking her head. According to Gifty, Nuamah�s wife, Lilian, who is in the United States of America (USA), first learnt of the accident involving the presidential press corps through the social media. She said Lilian was devastated when she learnt of the death later through the family. An elder of the family, Mr Michael Kabu Mensah, said �we heard the news on radio that Samuel was the one who died in the accident. In fact we were shocked�. Nuamah is survived by a wife, Lilian, who is in the United States of America (USA) and a two-year-old son, Jossey, who is in Ghana. Nuamah was the second of five siblings, comprising four boys and one girl, the rest of whom are all alive. There was a delegation from the New Times Corporation, the National Media Commission (NMC) and the government led by the Minister of Communications, Dr Edward Omane-Boamah.