Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije

On the night of 9 September 2021, with no police in sight, the Ablekuma South MP Alfred Oko Vanderpuije stepped into the road between Sakaman Junction and the Dansoman roundabout and directed traffic himself. Motorists cheered the former Mayor of Accra.

A Dutch name in Jamestown

His surname goes back to Jacobus van der Puije, a Dutch governor on the Gold Coast in the 1780s whose family came from Sint-Maartensdijk in the Netherlands. Vanderpuije himself is a Jamestown native, born in November 1955, who grew up in Mamprobi, Darkuman and Dansoman. He trained as a teacher at Accra Teacher Training College and took further degrees in education in the United States, at MidAmerica Nazarene and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Mayor and MP

President John Evans Atta Mills made him Mayor of Accra in 2009, and he stayed on under John Mahama until 2017. He then won Ablekuma South for the National Democratic Congress in 2016 with 54 per cent of the vote, and has sat on Parliament's Foreign Affairs and House committees. In October 2021 he spoke strongly in support of Parliament's opposition to LGBTQ+ rights.

Family

His wife, Gifty Naa Adei, died at Korle-Bu in 2012. In 2019 he married Cynthia Amerley Ayiku.