John Evans Atta Mills

John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills (21 July 1944 – 24 July 2012) was a Ghanaian politician and legal scholar who served as the 11th president of Ghana from 2009 until his death in 2012. He was inaugurated on 7 January 2009, having defeated the governing party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2008 Ghanaian presidential election. He was previously the third 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, and to date, the only Ghanaian head of state to die in office.

== Early life ==

Mills was born on 21 July 1944 in Tarkwa, in the Western Region of Ghana. His parents were John Atta Mills Sr., an educationist, 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...