Meet Ghanaian statesman, Ako Adjei

Dr. Ebenezer Ako Adjei (17 June 1916 – 14 January 2002) Born in Adjeikrom (Akyem-Abuakwa), Ghana. Ako-Adjei began his early education at the Busoso Railway Station Primary School where he walked one and half miles daily to and from school. He left the village school after two years, and was admitted into class three at La Presbyterian Junior School in Accra. His good performance at the senior school won him a scholarship on completing standard five in December 1932 to enter the Christ Church Grammar School, a private Secondary School which was then on the point of winding up.

After just a month at that school, he left and got admitted at Accra Academy in April 1933 and was put in form two. From his home in La, he walked the four miles to his school at James Town, since he couldn’t afford bus fare.
He completed the Secondary School in December 1936 passing the Cambridge School Certificate with exemption from London Matriculation.

Ako-Adjei taught for a while before entering the Civil Service in June 1937 as a Second Division Clerk in the Colonial Secretary’s Office which used to be popularly called “the Secretariat”. All this while he was writing regularly for Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s (Nigerian first president) African Morning Post newspaper.

Azikiwe developed great interest in Ako-Adjei’s writings and helped him attained a scholarship at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, USA.
In January 1939, he arrived at the University to the welcome of two Gold Coast (Ghana) students; K.A.B Jones-Quartey and Francis Nwia Kofi Nkrumah (who later became Kwame Nkrumah).

Ako-Adjei later obtained a Phelps Stokes Fund Scholarship and left to Hampton Institute Virginia (now Hampton University), where he graduated B.Sc. He won another scholarship to the Graduate School of Journalism, Colon University, New York, where he obtained the M.Sc. in June 1943. Just at time of graduating, Dr. Edwin Smith, a missionary who wrote the biography of Dr. J.E.K, Aggrey, came from England to establish an African Studies Department at Fisk University. Dr. Smith invited Ako-Adjei to be an Assistant. After working at Fisk for a year, a period within which he saved enough money to realize his childhood ambition of becoming a lawyer, he went to Britain and was enrolled at the Inner Temple in early May 1944.

While working hard at his studies, Ako-Adjei took active interest in politics and he later became President of the WASU (West African Students’ Union). It was on one of his rout that he ran into Nkrumah who had arrived in London a few weeks earlier and was facing a serious accommodation problem. He hosted Nkrumah until he found an accommodation for him.

In 1945, Dr. Ako Adjei attended the seminal conference of the Pan-African Movement in Manchester, England. It was at this meeting that a forthright call was made for African independence. Among the delegates were Kwame Nkrumah (became first president of Ghana, Joe Appiah, Jomo Kenyatta (became the first president of Kenya), Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (became the first president of Nigeria), Dr. W.E.B Dubois, and George Padmore.

Thus, by the time he returned to Gold Coast (Ghana), Ako Adjei was not only a qualified lawyer, but a veteran of the post-war political agitation among Africans in Britain to end colonialism in Africa.

Some days after staying in Accra, Ako-Adjei visited J.B. Danquah who was then with others discussing the possibility of forming a national political movement, Ako-Adjei joined in the discussions, he then became part of the planning committee of the UGCC (United Gold Coast Convention). When the UGCC was inaugurated at Saltpond,Ghana, on 4 August 1947, he became one of the leading members. And when the Accra branch of the Congress was inaugurated on August 22, 1947, he was elected Secretary, with Edward Akufo-Addo as President.

As the UGCC increased in membership, the desire became high among the leading members to run the organization like a modem political party, hence a decision was taken to have a full-time general-secretary. None of the professional men in the Convention was ready to give up his career to undertake that duty.

J.B. Danquah suggested Ako-Adjei, however, he rejected the offer and rather suggested Kwame Nkrumah who was then running the West African National Secretariat London, UK.

The reason; before he left London for Accra, Nkrumah told him “Ako, you’re going ahead of me, when you get to the Gold Coast and there is a job which you think I can do let me know right away so that I would come and work for some time; save some money and then return to London to complete my studies in law at Gray’s Inn.”

This of course promised to do. Thus, when Ako-Adjei heard of the full General- Secretary Job he did not hesitate to recommend Nkrumah. The Convention accepted Ako-Adjei’s suggestion and He wrote a letter to Nkrumah about it and later sent him 100 pounds which was provided by Alfred George Grant (Paa Grant, the founder/president and financier of the UGCC) for Nkrumah’s passage to Accra, which he arrived in December 1947, and Ako-Adjei introduced him to A. G. Grant (Paa Grant), J.B, Danquah, R.S. Blay and other members of the UGCC.

Ako-Adjei’s belief in the organizational capabilities of Nkrumah was soon vindicated when Nkrumah soon after his assumption of office as General Secretary of the UGCC initiated moves that expanded membership of the Convention. The rapid expansion of the UGCC coincided with the boycott campaign led by Nii Kwabena Bonne III, Osu-Alata, Mantse (chief of Osu-Alata a suburb of Accra), which ended on 28th February 1948, and the killing of three of the ex-servicemen who were protesting non-payment of their allowances, leading to riots (and the subsequent rioting) in Accra, and other towns in Gold Coast (Ghana).

On March 12, the Gold Coast’s Governor issued Removal Orders and police arrested and detained: Kwame Nkrumah, Joseph Boakye Danquah, Edward Akufo-Addo, William Ofori-Atta, Emmanuel Odarquaye Obetsebi-Lamptey and Ebenezer Ako-Adjei, who became known as the BIG SIX.

In March 1953, Ako-Adjei joined the CPP due to pressure from his friends, especially E. Quaye, Sonny Provencal and Paul Tagoe, and became Ghana’s first Minister of the Interior in 1957 (in the Kwame Nkrumah’s CPP government after Ghana’s independence ).

Ako-Adjei, as Ghana’s Foreign Minister articulated the concept of a “complete political union” for Africa in June 1960 at the meeting of African Foreign Ministers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; He urged the setting up of Africa Customs Union; Africa Free Trade Zone; and Africa Development Fund. It is a testament to his ideas that the proposed Africa Union (successor to OAU) in the year 2001, adopted policies similar to those Ako-Adjei enunciated in 1960.

In 1962, his alma mater Lincoln University, awarded him an Honorary Doctorate Degree.

During Ghana’s 40th independence anniversary on 7th March 1997, the then president Jerry John Rawlings honoured Dr. Ebenezer Ako -Adjei, Officer of the Order of the Star of Ghana, the highest national honour of the Republic of Ghana, for his contribution to the struggle for Ghana’s independence.

Former Sankara Interchange in Accra, was renamed Ako-Adjei Interchange.

There is also an Ako-Adjei Park in Osu, Accra.

Dr. Ebenezer Ako-Adjei; the last survivor of the Founding Fathers of modern Ghana.