The Republic of Ghana has been blessed with the rule and the leadership of great constitutional leaders from the past and the present administration who need to be highly honored and remembered for their good leadership skills, great works and contribution for the development of the country, Ghana.

Below is the personal profile of the constitutional leaders of Ghana.

Kwame Nkrumah PC (21 September 1909^[1][a] – 27 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician and revolutionary. He was the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, having led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957.^[2] An influential advocate of pan-Africanism, Nkrumah was a founding member of the Organization of African Unity and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1962.^[3]

After twelve years abroad pursuing higher education, developing his political philosophy and organizing with other diasporic pan-Africanists, Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast to begin his political career as an advocate of national independence.^[4] He formed the Convention People’s Party, which achieved rapid success through its unprecedented appeal to the common voter.^[5] He became Prime Minister in 1952 and retained the position when Ghana declared independence from Britain in 1957. In 1960, Ghanaians approved a new constitution and elected Nkrumah President.^[6]

His administration was primarily socialist as well as nationalist. It funded national industrial and energy projects, developed a strong national education system and promoted a pan-Africanist culture. Under Nkrumah, Ghana played a leading role in African international relations during the decolonization period.^[7]

In 1964, a constitutional amendment made Ghana a one-party state, with Nkrumah as president for life of both the nation and its party.^[8] Nkrumah was deposed in 1966 by the National Liberation Council which under the supervision of international financial institutions privatized many of the country’s state corporations.^[9] Nkrumah lived the rest of his life in Guinea, of which he was named honorary co-president.

Jerry John Rawlings (born Jerry Rawlings John; 22 June 1947)^[1] is a former Ghanaian military leader and subsequent politician who ruled the country from 1981 to 2001 and also for a brief period in 1979. He led a military junta until 1992, and then served two terms as the democratically elected President of Ghana.^[2][3][4]

Rawlings initially came to power in Ghana as a flight lieutenant of the Ghana Air Force following a coup d’état in 1979. Prior to that, he led an unsuccessful coup attempt against the ruling military government on 15 May 1979, just five weeks before scheduled democratic elections were due to take place. After initially handing power over to a civilian government, he took back control of the country on 31 December 1981 as the Chairman of the Provisional National Defence Council. In 1992, Rawlings resigned from the military, founded the National Democratic Congress, and became the first President of the Fourth Republic. He was re-elected in 1996 for four more years.^[5] After two terms in office, the limit according to the Ghanaian Constitution, Rawlings endorsed his vice-president John Atta Mills as presidential candidate in 2000. He currently serves as the African Union envoy to Somalia.

John Kofi Agyekum Kufuor KCB (born 8 December 1938) is a Ghanaian politician who served as the President of Ghana from 7 January 2001 to 7 January 2009. His parents had nine children. He was also Chairperson of the African Union from 2007 to 2008. His victory over John Evans Atta Mills after the end of Jerry Rawlings’ second term marked the first peaceful democratic transition of power in Ghana since independence in 1957.

Kufuor’s career has been spent on the liberal-democratic side of Ghanaian politics, in the parties descended from the United Gold Coast Convention and the United Party. He was a minister in Kofi Abrefa Busia‘s Progress Party government during Ghana’s Second Republic, and a Popular Front Party opposition frontbencher during the Third Republic. In the Fourth Republic Kufuor stood as the New Patriotic Party‘s candidate at the 1996 election, and then led it to victory in 2000 and 2004. Having served two terms, in 2008 he was no longer eligible for the presidency.

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 to 2012. He was inaugurated on 7 January 2009, having defeated the ruling party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2008 election.^[2] 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 is the first and only Ghanaian head of state to die in office.

John Dramani Mahama born 29 November 1958) is a Ghanaian politician who served as President of Ghana from 24 July 2012 to 7 January 2017.

He previously served as Vice President of Ghana from January 2009 to July 2012, and took office as President on 24 July 2012 following the death of his predecessor,^[1] John Atta Mills.^[2] Mahama is a communication expert, historian, and writer. He was a Member of Parliament for Bole Bamboi from 1997 to 2009 and Minister of Communications from 1998 to 2001. He is a member of the NDC (National Democratic Congress).

Mahama is the first vice president to take over the presidency from the death of his predecessor, Prof. John Atta Mills, and is the first head of state of Ghana to have been born after Ghana’s independence. He was elected after December 2012 election to serve as full-time President.^[3] He contested re-election for a second term in the 2016 election, but lost to the New Patriotic Party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo,^[4] whom he defeated in 2012. This made him the first President in the history of Ghana to not have won a second term.

In February 2019, Mahama was confirmed as the candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress to contest in the 2020 elections, the incumbent president Nana Akufo-Addo who unseated Mahama in a 2016 election, capitalizing on an economy that was slowing due to falling prices for gold, oil and cocoa exports.^[5]

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo  ^[1] born 29 March 1944^[2]) is currently the President of Ghana.^[3] He has been in office since 7 January 2017.^[4] He previously served as Attorney General from 2001 to 2003 and as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2003 to 2007 under the Kufuor-led administration.^[5] He is also currently the Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).^[6]

Nana Addo first ran for president in 2008 and again in 2012, both times as the candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), but was defeated on both occasions by National Democratic Congress’ candidates: John Evans Atta Mills in 2008 and John Dramani Mahama in 2012 after the former’s death. He refused to concede and went to court, the Supreme Court of Ghana affirmed John Dramani Mahama’s victory.^[7] He was chosen as the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party for a third time for the 2016 general elections and this time, he defeated John Dramani Mahama in the first round (winning with 53.85% of the votes), which marked the first time in a Ghanaian presidential election that an opposition candidate won a majority outright in the first round.^[8]