The Minister for Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Abla Dzifa Gomashie how spoken about how the mentorship of celebrated actress Maame Dokono and the late former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings played a defining role in her life.
Speaking to George Quaye on Prime Time on Joy Prime, the minister revealed how it all happened.
“Maame Dokono mentored me from my early years in the arts, Faith brought me to Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings.”
She added that the former First Lady was a strong influence in her life.
“May she continue to rest in peace,” she said this while paying respect to her.
She also acknowledged her work in women’s advocacy, noting, “I have walked this journey with Nanahemaa Adowa Weandoh for years. Supporting women has always been a calling for me.”
Gomashie stressed that her core values were formed long before politics. “I was created to be bold and principled,” she said, attributing these traits to her upbringing as a Ga woman raised by Catholic parents in Burma Camp. Discipline, punctuality and respect were compulsory in her home.
She recalled a childhood incident that stayed with her.
“I got home one day at 7:45 from an outing with my cousins. I had broken my curfew,” she said.
Although her father rarely resorted to physical punishment, she remembered his reaction clearly.
“That day, I saw him throw my checked suitcase away. That was his way of telling me I had crossed a line.”
Reflecting on her creative beginnings, Gomashie said, “I studied creative arts in secondary school” and “I was a very good dancer. The arts were my first love.”
She recounted how life later took her to Ethiopia with her late husband. Living there, where he served as Ghana’s defence attaché, broadened her cultural perspective and shaped how she views the creative sector today.
A major turning point in her political journey came when she discovered the absence of women representation from her part of the Volta Region.
“I realized that in the whole of the southern part of the Volta Region, no woman had ever been to Parliament,” she said. “It was traumatizing.”
According to her, that revelation motivated her to run for office. She decided to challenge that barrier. Her eventual victory, she noted, has since encouraged many.