Chief Justice is dead

By William Yaw Owusu

Monday March 26, 2007.
The Chief Justice, George Kingsley Acquah, is reported dead at the 37 Military Hospital.

He died at about 1.00am on Sunday at the hospital where he was rushed to from the airport after he was brought in by an air ambulance at 6.00am on Saturday from India where he was receiving treatment for a cancer reported to be leukemia.

He had also received treatment in the United States.

He turned 65 on Independence Day, March 6 2007.

Justice Acquah's ill health became public on the day he was to receive his national honours at the first event organised by the state on June 30, 2006 when he had to be rushed home from the programme.

A few days later he was flown to the U.S. for medical treatment and returned home in September. When he resumed work, he led a delegation of senior judges and judicial service staff to sign a book of condolence that had been opened for the late Justice D.F. Annan, a former Speaker of Parliament.

Justice Acquah's last public assignment was the commissioning of the motor courts in Accra on January 11, 2007 but was last seen publicly by many people in February at the funeral of his mother, which he had the responsibility of carrying out as an only child, and at the Parliament House where he witnessed the delivery of the State of the Nation address by President Kufuor.

When the Times visited the Chief Justice's family home at West Tanokrom in Takoradi, family members clad in mourning clothes had gathered while people trooped in to ascertain the news of his death.

A family member told the Times that the news of the CJ's death came as a great shock to them and said the family was at a loss as to how to handle the situation coming a month after the death of his mother.

Chief Justice George Kingsley Acquah was appointed on June 20, 2003 after a successful legal career from 1972 when he started private legal practice till his appointment in 2003 during which time he was working as a Supreme Court Judge.

Mr Justice Acquah was born in Sekondi on March 6, 1942 and attended Adisadel College, Cape Coast, from 1957 to 1963 for both his West African Examination Council Ordinary and Advanced Level Certificates.

He proceeded to the University of Ghana, Legon in 1964 to 1967 and obtained a B.A (Hons) Philosophy. Between 1968 and 1970 he studied and obtained LL.B. Hons in Law from the same University.

From 1970 to 1972, Justice Acquah entered the Ghana Law School where he obtained his Professional Certificate in Law and was called to the Bar in 1972.

He left behind a wife and six children.