A former editor of the Mirror, Nicholas Allandu has passed away in Accra. He is thought to be a septuagenarian.
Until his transition he lived in his residence at Dansoman having been battling with an illness for some time now.
The deceased was a close friend of the late Lawyer RI Alhassan, the running mate of the late Prof Adu Boahen the flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) during the 1992 general election.
The late editor was the best man when the first lawyer from the Northern Region was getting married to his British wife, Jane now resident in Tamale. RI Alhassan too became his best man when he too was getting married.
Three-time Journalist of the Year, Razak El Alawa remembers him thus “he assisted me to acquire my first car when I was the regional editor of the Daily Graphic in the Northern Region. In those days there were no second hand cars and so one had to queue to purchase a car from places like GNTC, Japan Motors. Graphic offered me an amount of ¢10,000 and so I told the late Nicholas Allandu and he said I should contact the then Northern Regional Commissioner in 1975, Col Kunta Zuma. One day while a convoy was driving past in Sakasaka in Tamale, the regional commissioner whom I had told about the car purchase ordered the convoy to stop and he sent his ADC, Maj Nantogma to call me. When I met him he said I should go and see Maj Sulemana of the RECCE Regiment who had arranged for the purchase and had the car parked at his residence. I contacted him and drove away my first car, Datsun 140 J. When Nicholas Allandu became Ghana’s envoy to Saudi Arabia he adopted the name Abdul Rauf”.
The head of the Dagomba community in Koforidua, Alhaji Abu Adams who broke the news to DAILY GUIDE remembered the deceased thus. “He was editor of the Sunday Mirror when the infamous Apollo 568 occurred by which many workers were dismissed. He was one of the victims but when the coup of General Kutu Acheampong took place, he was appointed Ghana’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.”
The late RI Alhassan’s wife Jane posted on her facebook wall “my husband’s journalist friend, Mr. Nicholas Alando has passed away. When I first came to Ghana in 1961, he escorted me around as my husband was still studying in London.”
By A.R. Gomda