Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Ebenezer Ako-Adjei
1916 – 2002
Of the Big Six, and Ghana's Foreign Minister
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Why they are here
One of the Big Six arrested in 1948, and the man who introduced Kwame Nkrumah to the UGCC in the first place. Later Ghana's foreign minister.
Ebenezer Ako-Adjei studied in the United States at Lincoln University — where he overlapped with Kwame Nkrumah — and then law in London, where he was active in the West African Students' Union alongside the men who would run half a dozen countries.
His single most consequential act was a recommendation. When the United Gold Coast Convention needed a full-time general secretary in 1947, it was Ako-Adjei who proposed Nkrumah, whom he knew from America and London. The entire subsequent history of Ghanaian independence runs through that suggestion.
He was one of the six UGCC leaders detained by the British in 1948 after the Christiansborg shootings. Unlike most of the six he later joined Nkrumah's Convention People's Party, and served the independent state as minister of the interior, of labour, of justice and then of foreign affairs, representing Ghana at the United Nations and in the founding of the Organisation of African Unity.
He was arrested in 1962 over the Kulungugu bomb attempt on Nkrumah's life, tried for treason and acquitted by the Supreme Court — the verdict Nkrumah then had set aside, dismissing the Chief Justice. Ako-Adjei was re-detained and held until 1966. He lived quietly afterwards and died in 2002.
His single most consequential act was a recommendation. When the United Gold Coast Convention needed a full-time general secretary in 1947, it was Ako-Adjei who proposed Nkrumah, whom he knew from America and London. The entire subsequent history of Ghanaian independence runs through that suggestion.
He was one of the six UGCC leaders detained by the British in 1948 after the Christiansborg shootings. Unlike most of the six he later joined Nkrumah's Convention People's Party, and served the independent state as minister of the interior, of labour, of justice and then of foreign affairs, representing Ghana at the United Nations and in the founding of the Organisation of African Unity.
He was arrested in 1962 over the Kulungugu bomb attempt on Nkrumah's life, tried for treason and acquitted by the Supreme Court — the verdict Nkrumah then had set aside, dismissing the Chief Justice. Ako-Adjei was re-detained and held until 1966. He lived quietly afterwards and died in 2002.
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