The woman who served as the Director of the Castle Information Bureau during the administration of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) from 1982 to 1992, and of the Public Affairs Secretariat at the office of President Jerry John Rawlings from 1992 to 2001, Mrs. Valerie Anne Sackey, has died.
According to a report by newstitbits.com, she passed away on December 31, 2023.
Her death was announced by the J.J. Rawlings Foundation on January 2, 2024, the report added.
About Valerie Sackey:
Valerie Sackey (nee Valerie Anne Lindoe) was born in 1935 in Accrington in the United Kingdom to Valentine Lindoe, Principal of the Accrington College of Art and Nancy Lindoe, an arts teacher in the college.
She met and married Mr. Horace Walter Kofi Sackey at the London School of Economics and Political Science where they were both studying, and came to Ghana three days after independence in March 1957.
On arrival in Ghana, she taught Geography at the Opoku Ware Secondary School and later joined the Department of Game and Wildlife and was posted to the Kumasi zoo.
When her husband was appointed a Minister of State in the Progress Party government led by Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia in 1969, she moved to Accra and continued to work with the Department of Game and Wildlife.
On her return to Kumasi following the fall of the Progress Party government in 1972, Mrs. Valerie Sackey transferred to the Kumasi unit of the Department of Game and Wildlife and then on to teaching at St. Louis Secondary School in Kumasi.
During this period, she wrote on various topical issues for the Pioneer newspaper under the pen name of Yaa Asantewaa.
Her direct and commonsensical approach to issues gained her a wide readership in a culture prone to using euphemisms to totter around uncomfortable facts of our socio political life.
