*I designed covers of West Africa magazine for 10 years on weekly basis. Hearing of the passing of Jerry Rawlings who staged two coups and later was a driving force behind Ghana’s emergence as a stable democracy, I could not help but remember some covers I designed as a resident artist for West Africa magazine and cover editions of New African magazine as a freelancer with images or illustrations of JR on the covers.
Being photogenic, I jumped at any chance I had, to use his image on the magazine covers. His image and name sold magazines. “A great tree has fallen, and Ghana is poorer for this loss,” this being statement made by Ghana’s present President Nana Akufo-Addo on hearing his passing.
Rawlings who was Ghana’s leader as a military officer and later as a politician died at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) in Accra. His father was Scottish whilst his mother was Ghanaian. I remember his wife Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings First lady then, who wrote a nice letter to me to commend my OUR ROOTS Black history drawings. How big Rawlings was in Africa? Ask Nigerians who lived through his era…they would say something like “we need a Rawlings revolution in Nigeria.” Rawlings was the next well known Ghanaian leader after Pan Africanist Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the first leader of independent Ghana.
TAYO Fatunla is an award-winning Nigerian Comic Artist, Editorial Cartoonist, Writer and Illustrator. He is one of the participants of the CARTAN Virtual cartoon exhibition marking 60 years of Nigeria. He is a graduate of the prestigious Kubert School, in New Jersey, US. and recipient of the 2018 ECBACC Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award for his illustrated OUR ROOTS creation and series – Famous people in Black History – He participated in the UNESCO’s Cartooning In Africa forum held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and the Cartooning Global Forum in Paris, France and took part in the Afropolitan Comics virtual comics exhibition arranged by the French Institute in South Africa coinciding with its annual National Arts Festival –– www.tayofatunla.com/[email protected]
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