Former Secretary to the late President Jerry John Rawlings and current Ambassador to the United States of America (USA), Victor Smith, has opened up about the status of his relationship with the Rawlings family.
Speaking on Channel One TV’s Face to Face, aired on Tuesday, September 23, 2025, Victor Smith said that the wife of the late president, Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings, and some of her children still harbor resentment toward him following his fallout with the family some years ago.
“I still have issues with the children; some of them don’t want to talk to me, but Zanetor, she is down-to-earth. We have had a couple of meetings. I would love to make up with the mother,” he said.
Answering a question about whether the former First Lady should return to the party founded by her husband, the National Democratic Congress (NDC); Ambassador Smith said the decision ultimately lies with Mrs Rawlings.
He further explored the strained relationship between him and Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings while expressing his willingness to patch things up with her.
Rawlings asked me to write my own sacking letter – Victor Smith opens up on how he was fired
“As to coming back to the party, it is not within my power to do that. She could have done that herself. We can’t really bring her in against her wishes; it’s up to her. When the husband was alive, she never did. Her husband was caught between a rock and a hard place: founder of a party and my wife’s. Could you abandon your wife? No, nobody abandons their wife because she is the mother of your children, if not for nothing at all. So, he managed to steer his way until God came for him. I don’t know the situation now—whether she wants to come back to our party,” he said.
“I think there are certain things that, if I had the chance, I would explain to her, and she would say that I wasn’t wrong. But she also dislikes me for some reason,” he added.
Asked if the NDC should take the initiative to broker peace with Mrs Rawlings, Ambassador Smith said, “I think the ship has long sailed.”
Former President Rawlings fired Victor Smith as his spokesperson via a text message in April 2008.
In his version of the story, Victor Smith said Rawlings fired him because he (Victor Smith) supported the late Prof John Mills’ choice of John Dramani Mahama as running mate for the 2008 presidential election, against the wishes of the Rawlingses.
However, former President Rawlings, telling his side of the story for the first time in June 2017, disagreed with the assertion by giving a different account during a commemoration of the 38th anniversary of the June 4, 1979, uprising in Wa.
“I used to have a secretary called Victor Smith; we fell out. It wasn’t so much because of disagreement over John Mahama, and yet that’s what he’s touting. And yet I guess he, like a few of us who want to be president, have stepped back, being promised, of course, that he will make them running mates, I presume.
“Listen, why did I turn against this boy called Victor Smith?” the former military ruler asked rhetorically.
Why the Rawlings’ don’t talk to me – Victor Smith details
“He (Mr Smith) was my secretary. Some Nigerians invited us to the USA—I had left office—to come and give a talk and commission some business for them. We went. When we returned, subsequently—months or how many years later—when Prof Mills was our flag bearer, then these Nigerians decided to help, so they were dealing with my office, Mr Victor Smith. Now, I subsequently heard about it because there was a to-and-fro over this money, contribution issue, till somebody finally called me that this is what is going on: ‘They know me, they want to give me the money, and I can pass it on, not give it to Victor Smith, and Victor Smith is saying that: “No, he would take it to the prof, [because] I’m not the one who is going to be the candidate,” blah blah blah blah—that type of rubbish. So, they come out through somebody and said: “This is what is going on,” he said.
“Eventually, the contribution did not even come. It did not come. I did not receive any contribution from them, through Mills, through Smith, or directly through the person who came to see me also, and I don’t believe that they sent it to Mills, and I don’t believe that Prof Mills received any money from that place because I think they got fed up with the way this man was behaving,” Rawlings continued.
“And yet, when the time to pour poison on me started, this secretary of mine was telling the world on radio stations that a contribution was coming for a certain nationalistic duty, and he had stopped it and diverted it to the flag bearer. In other words, he had stopped it from coming to me. I was disgusted that this guy would make up such a story. And you know the one who angered me the most? Our Prof Mills, who knew the truth but kept quiet for this poison to burn me—I was fraudulent,” he complained.
GA/VPO
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