Edward Akufo-Addo

Edward Akufo-Addo was a lawyer and one of the Big Six of Ghana's independence struggle who became Chief Justice from 1966 to 1970 and ceremonial President in the Second Republic, from 1970 to 1972. He was born at Dodowa on 26 June 1906 and died on 17 July 1979. He was the father of President Nana Akufo-Addo.

His parents were from Akropong. He went to Presbyterian schools there, then Achimota College, and won a scholarship to St Peter's College, Oxford, where he read philosophy and politics. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1940 and set up in practice in Accra.

He was a founding member of the United Gold Coast Convention and was detained with the rest of the Big Six after the 1948 riots. He sat on the Legislative Council and the Coussey Commission. As a Supreme Court judge he sat on the treason trial after the Kulungugu attack on Nkrumah and was dismissed in 1964 after the court acquitted some of the accused. After the 1966 coup he became Chief Justice and chaired the commission that drafted the 1969 Constitution. He was President under Prime Minister Kofi Busia until the coup of January 1972.