The lights have turned off for the woman who helped turn on colour television in Ghana.
And with the nation eyes fully fixed on a crucial elections next month, the deficit of national attention at the funeral of Eva Lokko will remain a grave injustice.
Eva Lokko was the last child but all her life she only did first things. The first satellite communication engineer, only female in an engineering team to install colour television infrastructure in 1985.
First female Director-General at Ghana Broadcasting Corporation and the first PPP politician to have a female for a vice presidential candidate.
When young ladies were carrying make-up and small mirrors in their purse, Eva Lokko carried screwdrivers and soldering iron, her husband described meeting Eva in 1975.
There was none of the satisfied smile of her husband’s wedding day photo here today. Only a look of harassment, a beat-up man tamed by death.
“All this is a new place, with despair, near madness, the terrible wonder of Eva no longer a physical presence” Nii Bentsi-Enchill sobbed through the tribute until each word pounded out any little strength to continue.
He broke off for Eva Lokko’s daughter to take over the tribute that fires salvos at a so-called cabal of corruption that worked against her at GBC. They were “charlatans, hypocrites, liars and thieves”.
Eva Lokko re-joined GBC as the first female Director-General after spending about 13 years working with the UN. She grew anxious to serve Ghana after working with and in 50 countries while at the UN.
“I having been going around helping to solve other country’s problems, why can’t I come home to help solve the problems of my own country” a tribute from Nabanyin Pratt and family captured her anxiety to return home.
She got the job at GBC in 2002 but by November 2005, the GBC Board Chairman had instructed that her office be nailed shut as a monstrous campaign of vilification led to her hounding out of GBC.
“The mafia proved too strong and well entrenched…I knew she was not going to win and told her so, but she would not budge. She was ready to die for Ghana”, Nabanyin Pratt’s tribute revealed.
After seven years in court, Eva Lokko prevailed.
The PPP Presidential candidate Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom’s face had a make-over of grief as the tributes were read. Skin areas re-aligned and melted off in a formation of grief at every memory of their 2012 presidential campaign where Eva Lokko was his running mate.
NPP’s Nkrabea Effah-Dartey was one of the few politicians who attended the funeral. And for most parts, he was very engrossed finding out things about Eva in an exhaustive booklet of tributes.
NPP Parliamentary candidate for Klottey Korle Philip Addison was there to pay his last respects to a woman he was to compete with for the prized parliamentary seat.
NDC contender to the same Klottey Korle seat Dr Zanetor Rawlings was also there to pay her last respect. The race for parliament will go on without Madam Eva Lokko.
Eva Lokko 1952-2016
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