Nii Amaa Ollennu

Ollennu was born in Labadi, Accra in 1906 and belonged to the Ga people.[3] His parents were Wilfred Kuma Ollennu and Salomey Anerkai Mandin Abbey.[4] Ollennu attended the middle boarding school, the Salem School at Osu .[5] He had his secondary education at Accra High School.[6] Part of his earlier education was at the Presbyterian Training College at Akropong in the Eastern Region of Ghana, where he studied pedagogy and theology.[7] He went to England to study jurisprudence at the Middle Temple, London and was called to the Bar in 1940 after having taken 18 months to complete a three year course passing with distinction - earning recognition from the Queen's Council.[8]

The first person in his family to qualify as a lawyer, he was registered as Raphael Nii Amaa Ollennu in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) register in 1940.[8][9] He later became a puisne judge in 1955, rising through the ranks to become a High Court judge and on 1 September 1962, elevated to a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana.[8][10] He also published books on various legal topics and was an authority on traditional African land-tenure system. He was also actively involved with the General Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.[11] He served as the President of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences from 1969 to 1972.[12]

Nii Amaa Ollennu was one of the Accra representatives in the Gold Coast Legislative Assembly during the early 1950s.[7] In 1950, he founded the National Democratic Party, becoming its leader. At the 1951 Gold Coast legislative election, the party failed to win any seats, and the following year, he led it into the Ghana Congress Party.[13][14][15] Ollennu was thus in opposition alongside Busia and Danquah to Nkrumah's Convention People's Party.

Nii Amaa Ollennu married four times. His first wife was Emily Jiagge of Keta in the Volta Region whose grandfather was Togbui Tamakloe, Chief of Uti. He had two children with her: Amerley Ollennu and Boni-Ashitey Ollennu, a barrister in London. He then married Charlotte Amy Sawyerr (née Mettle), the daughter of the Rev. John Josiah Mettle and Mrs. Marian Anohuma Mettle (née Harvey). They had two children together: Noni-Ashitey (Fio) and Ashitei. Mettle had five other children from another marriage. She died in 2016, aged 103 years. One of his wives was Nana Afua Frema Busia, the Queenmother of Wenchi and a sister to Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia, Prime Minister of Ghana. A daughter of Justice Nii Amaa Ollennu and Nana Afua Frema Busia, Amerley Ollennu Awua-Asamoa, was appointed Ghana's Ambassador to Denmark in 2017.[16]

Nii Amaa Ollennu died in December 1986.[2]

• Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana
• List of judges of the Supreme Court of Ghana
• Supreme Court of Ghana

• Ollennu, Nii Amaa (1962). Principles of Customary Land Law in Ghana. Law in Africa Volume 2. London: Sweet and Maxwell. OCLC 877770.
• Humphrey, J.; Fiseer, N. A.; Ollennu, Nii Amaa (1966). The Law of Testate and Intestate Succession in Ghana. Law in Africa Volume 16. London: Sweet and Maxwell. B0000CN89R.
• Ollennu, Nii Amaa; Gordon R. Woodman (1985). Ollennu's Principles of Customary Land Law in Ghana (2nd ed.). Birmingham: CAL Press. ISBN 978-0-9510530-0-3.