Edward Akufo-Addo

Edward Akufo-Addo , (born June 26, 1906 in Dodowa , † July 17, 1979 in Accra ) was a Ghanaian lawyer and politician. He was one of the six leaders of the independence movement later known as The Big Six . From 1962 to 1964 he was a Supreme Court judge and from 1970 to 1972 President of the State.

Early years

After attending elementary and middle school, Akufo-Addo entered Achimota College in Accra. He studied on a scholarship at St. Peter's College at Oxford University . In 1940 he was admitted to the bar in London. After his return to the British Gold Coast colony in 1941, he worked as a lawyer, but soon became politically active. He was a founding member of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), which was founded in 1947 as the first party in what was then the Gold Coast colony. In 1948 Akufo-Addo was imprisoned by the British colonial administration along with Kwame Nkrumah , JB Danquah , Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey , William Ofori Atta and Ebenezer Ako-Adjei . These leaders of the Ghanaian independence movement, later known as the Big Six, were accused of being responsible for the so-called Accra riots . From 1949 to 1950 he was a member of the colony's legislative council.

Judge

Under Nkrumah's presidency, he had been a member of the Supreme Court since 1962, but was an opponent of its increasingly authoritarian style of government. In September 1964, he and his fellow judges were dismissed from office when the judgments in a trial for an assassination attempt on Nkrumah did not meet his wishes. After Nkrumah's fall in February 1966, he was reinstated and president of the Supreme Court. From 1966 to 1968 he was also chairman of the commission that drafted a new constitution for Ghana.

president

On August 31, 1970 he became president. However, this was a purely representative office, as all power rested with the Prime Minister. His presidency ended in January 1972 with the military coup led by Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong . Akufo-Addo died of natural causes in July 1979.

family

Akufo-Addo was married to a daughter of William Ofori-Atta , an influential politician and Omanhene (King) of Akyem Abuakwa. They had four children, his eldest son Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was the Foreign Minister of Ghana from 2003 to 2007 . In 2008 he ran as a candidate for the New Patriotic Party in the presidential election. He lost the National Democratic Congress candidate in the runoff election against John Atta Mills . After another defeat in 2012, he won the 2016 presidential election with 53.85% of the vote.

See also

• History of Ghana

literature

• Edward Akufo-Addo , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 04/1980 from January 14, 1980, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Short biography at Ghanaweb (English)
• Leaders of Ghana: Edward Akuffo Addo ( Memento of February 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See T. Peter Omari: Kwame Nkrumah. The Anatomy of an African Dictatorship, Accra 2000, pp. 97 ff.
2. ↑ 2016 Presidential Results - Electoral Commission Ghana. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 19, 2017 ; accessed on April 2, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.