John Atta Mills

John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills (21 July 1944 – 24 July 2012) was a Ghanaian politician and legal scholar who served as President of Ghana from 2009 until his death in 2012.

Mills was born on 21 July 1944 in Tarkwa, in the Western Region of Ghana.

His parents were John Atta Mills Sr., an educator, who taught at the Komenda Teacher Training College and Mercy Dawson Amoah.

He was the second child (and first son) among seven siblings.

A member of the Fante ethnic group, he hailed from the town of Ekumfi Otuam in the Mfantsiman East constituency of the Central Region of Ghana.

He had his primary and middle school education at Huni Valley Methodist Primary School and Komenda Methodist Middle School respectively.

He then proceeded to the prestigious Achimota School for his secondary education, where he completed the Ordinary and Advanced-Level Certificates in 1961 and 1963 respectively, and the University of Ghana, Legon, where he completed a bachelor of law degree, LLB and a professional law certificate in 1967.

Mills studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he obtained an LLM in 1968 and earned a PhD in Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies School of Law, part of the federal University of London, after completing his doctoral thesis in the field of taxation and economic development in 1971 at the age of 27.

Mills' first formal teaching assignment was as a lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Ghana.

He spent close to twenty-five years teaching at Legon and other institutions of higher learning.

During this period, he authored several publications relating to taxation in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1971, he was selected for the Fulbright Scholar programme at Stanford Law School in the US.

He returned to his homeland, Ghana, at the end of the international educational exchange fellowship to work at his alma mater, the University of Ghana, for 25 years.

He became a visiting professor at Temple University (Philadelphia, USA), with two stints from 1978 to 1979, and 1986 to 1987.

He was also a visiting lecturer at Leiden University in the Netherlands from 1985 to 1986.

Outside of his academic pursuits, Mills was the Acting Commissioner of Ghana's Internal Revenue Service from 1988 to 1993 under President Jerry John Rawlings, and the substantive Commissioner from 1993 to 1996.

By 1992, he had become an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Ghana.

For the inaugural presidential election in 1992, the National Convention Party (NCP) had formed an alliance with the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Former Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) Chairman, and leader of Ghana, Flight-Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings chose the NCP leader, Kow Nkensen Arkaah, as his running-mate for vice-president.

Having been elected in the 1992 election, Arkaah served between 1992 and 1996.

However, on 29 January 1996, the NCP broke with the NDC.

Arkaah with the National Convention Party formed the Great Alliance with the New Patriotic Party and was subsequently nominated as the running mate of John Agyekum Kufuor to challenge the National Democratic Congress.

Rawlings selected Mills for the vacated Vice-Presidency in his bid for re-election to a second term in the election and was re-elected to his second term in office, serving from 1996 to 2000.

In his capacity as vice-president, he served as the Chairman of the Police Council of Ghana and the Chairman of the Economic Management Team.

He was previously the Vice-President from 1997 to 2001 under President Jerry Rawlings, and he contested unsuccessfully in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections as the candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

He was the first Ghanaian head of state to die in office.

In 2000, Mills became the NDC's candidate for the 2000 presidential election after Rawlings had served his constitutionally mandated terms as president.

The main rival for Mills' own bid for the presidency was John Agyekum Kufuor, who was running as the candidate for the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

In the heat of the 2000 presidential campaign, Mills was roundly criticized for statements that if elected he would consult with Rawlings daily.

In the first round, held on 7 December 2000, Mills gained 44.8% of the vote, Kufuor won the first round with 48.4%, thus forcing a second round.

On 28 December 2000, Kufuor defeated Mills with 56.9% of the vote and was sworn in as president on 7 January 2001.

In 2002, he was a visiting scholar at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia through a joint Canadian International Development Agency(CIDA) – International Development Research Centre (IDRC) fellowship programme.

In December 2002, Mills was elected by his party to be its flag bearer and lead them into the 2004 election.

He was, however, defeated again by incumbent president John Agyekum Kufuor, who received 52.45% of the vote on the first ballot.

On 21 December 2006, he became the NDC's candidate for the 2008 presidential election, winning his party's ticket by an 81.4% result (1,362 votes), far ahead of his opponents, Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu, and Eddie Annan.

In the 2008 election, John Agyekum Kufuor was no longer eligible to run as president, having served two terms.

It was during this time that the term Better Ghana Agenda was coined.

During the 2008 elections, in an attempt to change the public perception at the time that he would be a political lackey of his former mentor, Jerry Rawlings when elected, he distanced himself from his previous comments made in the 2000 campaign.

Mills' main opponent from the New Patriotic Party was now Nana Akufo-Addo.

He was inaugurated on 7 January 2009, having defeated the governing party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2008 Ghanaian presidential election.