Mr. Justice E. A. Addo, was a jurist of uncommonly high pedigree. He spent a large part of his early legal career as a State Attorney. He served in Tamale, Sunyani and other regional offices of the Ministry of Justice, where he honed his considerable Legal skills. It was therefore no surprise that he rose to become Solicitor General and retired as an Appeal Court Judge.
Our paths crossed when after the 31st December Revolution he was invited by Dr. Obed Yao Asamoah, then PNDC Secretary for Foreign Affairs to head the Legal and Consular Department. Mr. Addo, Chief State Attorney as he then was, had just from come down from Cambridge. For some of us Lawyers in the Foreign Service, his arrival as Director, LECB like was a breath of fresh air.
The remit of the legal and consular Bureau has always been to provide advice on all aspects of international law to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and indeed to the Government of Ghana. This includes negotiation and ratification of treaties, as well as generally ensuring administrative justice in the internal management of the ministry. It also provides consular and notarial services, provides the interface between municipal and international law. At the best of times it was an uneventful bureau, where nothing much happened. Directors generally came and went, waiting for the proverbial posting.
Dr. O.Y. Asamoah, an academic lawyer and lecturer in Law and Publicist of International Law. He was appointed PNDC Secretary for Foreign Affairs L.E.C.B. was never to be the same again.
As a lawyer, with a more than ordinary interest in Public International law, his focus naturally turned on to the Legal and Consular Department. He zoomed in like a laser on the legal department. It did not take him long to arrive at the conclusion, that the department was not fit for purpose. He decided to introduce more professionalism into the place. He brought in Mr. E. A. Addo on secondment from the Attorney General’s Department. A Chief State Attorney, with long experience in the regions Mr. Addo’s arrival was not met with too much enthusiasm at first. Who is this fellow? How much Law does he know anyway? Mr. Addo, turned out to be serious, focused, informal and totally unassuming. He had this disarming self-deprecating sense of humor. He also knew his law, and he was not about to allow anybody to forget that.
He began to quietly reorganize the department. He proved ready and willing to discuss and debate legal issues. He was not overly concerned about rank and hierarchy, and above all, he did not stand on ceremony. This was our good fortune. He immediately put a stop to the practice of automatically referring all seemingly complex Legal issues to the Attorney General’s department. He turned out to be the consummate professional. One such instance was the question of the legal ownership of the Residency of the Ghana Embassy in Cairo.
This is a very capacious building in the very busy Commercial area in Mohandessin, Cairo, acquired in the early sixties through Kwame Nkrumah’s relations with President Nasser of Egypt, his “Akonta”. Though purchased outright during the Nkrumah regime in the 60’s, the Egyptian land lord’s successor had commenced a legal process purporting to reclaim his property. He alleged that it was lease hold rather than freehold. Documents on the property were not readily available in the archives. Mr. Addo took the matter up with more than ordinary zeal.
Several visits to the legal record office in Cairo became necessary. Litigation became inevitable. To cut a long story short, our interest in the property was secured. This property currently houses the Chancery of the Ghana Embassy. With the benefit of hindsight it is fair to say that without Mr. Addo’s dedication, this property would have been lost to Ghana. This I believe is Mr. Addo’s most important legacy to the Foreign Ministry.
Mr. Justice Addo also put in a lot of work negotiating Ghana’s positions at the Law of the Sea Conference. This ended with a Ghanaian, Mr. Nii Allotey Odunton as UN Under Secretary General and Chief Executive of the International Sea Bed Authority. As a measure of his international reputation, Mr. Addo was promptly elected to the International Commission of Jurists, the only Ghanaian, I believe to have been elected to this international juridical body. Against this background, it did not take long for the Attorney General’s Department to seek his return. That was how he became Solicitor General, and later Justice of Appeal.
To our astonishment, Mr Addo after a short while resigned from the bench, he said, to pursue other interests in international law. I suspect he might have been a little unnerved by some occurrences on the bench which did not rest soundly with his Christian conscience. Many of us had hoped that he would set up his Chambers so we could practice law under his guidance. He had diligently trained many of us. One of his officers, Mr. Ebenezer Appreku, was
later elected to the African Union Commission on International Law. Mr. Appreku passed away recently, another sad event from which we are yet to recover.
So today, even as we mourn his passing, the born again Christian that we knew he was, we are comforted by the thought that Mr. Justice Addo is probably rest smiling benignly down on us, and ready to put in a nolle prosequi on our joint behalves. We miss him, and will continue to do so.
May his gentle soul rest in perfect peace.
REQUIESCAT IN PACE, DIRECTOR
Kwesi Quartey
Addis Ababa
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