Nii Amaa Ollennu

Raphael Nii Amaa Ollennu was a judge, a Speaker of Parliament and, for three weeks in August 1970, acting President of Ghana. He was born at Labadi in Accra on 21 May 1906 and died in December 1986.

He went to the Salem School at Osu, Accra High School and the Presbyterian Training College at Akropong, and was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1940, the first lawyer in his family. In the early 1950s he founded the National Democratic Party and sat in the Legislative Assembly for Accra, in opposition to Nkrumah's CPP alongside Busia and Danquah.

He became a puisne judge in 1955 and a Supreme Court justice in 1962. He was a leading authority on customary land tenure and an honorary law professor at the University of Ghana, and he was president of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences from 1969 to 1972. In the Second Republic he was Speaker of Parliament from 1969 to 1972, and as chairman of the Presidential Commission he acted as head of state from 7 to 31 August 1970, handing over to Edward Akufo-Addo. He married four times; one wife was a sister of Prime Minister Busia.