Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Nii Amaa Ollennu
1906 – 1986
Supreme Court judge, Speaker, and briefly acting President
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Why they are here
A Supreme Court judge and Speaker of Parliament who served as acting President of Ghana for a fortnight in 1970 — and whose writing on customary land law is still cited.
Nii Amaa Ollennu was a Ga lawyer from Accra, called to the bar in London, who built his reputation in the area of Ghanaian law that mattered most to ordinary people and least to the colonial courts: customary land tenure.
His Principles of Customary Land Law in Ghana, published in 1962, set out the rules by which stools, families and individuals actually hold and transfer land — a body of law that had been treated as local custom rather than as law, and which governs the great majority of land in the country. It remains a standard authority and is still cited in Ghanaian judgments.
He sat on the Supreme Court, and after the fall of Nkrumah served as Speaker of the National Assembly in the Second Republic. When President Edward Akufo-Addo's term ended in August 1970 and the presidential commission arrangement lapsed, Ollennu as Speaker served as acting President of Ghana for a fortnight before the new president was sworn in — a constitutional footnote, but one that makes him one of very few Ghanaians to have held the office.
He chaired commissions of inquiry, including into the 1968 local elections, and wrote extensively on the relationship between customary institutions and a modern constitution.
His Principles of Customary Land Law in Ghana, published in 1962, set out the rules by which stools, families and individuals actually hold and transfer land — a body of law that had been treated as local custom rather than as law, and which governs the great majority of land in the country. It remains a standard authority and is still cited in Ghanaian judgments.
He sat on the Supreme Court, and after the fall of Nkrumah served as Speaker of the National Assembly in the Second Republic. When President Edward Akufo-Addo's term ended in August 1970 and the presidential commission arrangement lapsed, Ollennu as Speaker served as acting President of Ghana for a fortnight before the new president was sworn in — a constitutional footnote, but one that makes him one of very few Ghanaians to have held the office.
He chaired commissions of inquiry, including into the 1968 local elections, and wrote extensively on the relationship between customary institutions and a modern constitution.
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