A lawyer and professor from Ghana is named Tsatsu Tsikata. He also served as the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation's former CEO. He is recognized as one of the top members of the political party and a major affiliate of the National Democratic Congress as well as its legal counsel.
Tsikata was born in Keta, a town in Ghana's southern Volta Region. Nonetheless, he was raised in Adabraka, a suburb of Accra, the nation of Ghana's capital. He enrolled in school at a young age because he wanted to go to school with his older brother Fui.
Jerry Rawlings, the former president of Ghana, also attended Mrs. Sam's Preparatory School, which he attended after Additrom Preparatory School.
He was once more transferred to Accra Newtown Experimental School, where he was moved directly from Year 2 to Year 3 in order to keep up with his bigger brother Fui. At the age of nine, he began his secondary education at the Mfantsipim School, where his father and older brother Fui Sokpoli Tsikata also studied, thanks to a scholarship he received from the United Africa Corporation (UAC) in 1960.
After completing his five-year program, he was 16 when he was accepted into the University of Ghana, Legon, where he graduated with an LL.B. with First Class at age 18. At that point, just one other 18-year-old had finished a degree program. Professor Ofosu Amaah and Dr. Obed Asamoah, a former foreign minister and attorney general of Ghana, served as his instructors.
Following this, he was awarded a post-graduate scholarship from the University of Ghana to Oxford University, where he once more graduated with first-class honors in his Bachelor of Civil Law degree, which is comparable to a master's degree at other British universities.
At Oxford University, Tsikata obtained a Junior Research Fellowship and worked as a tutor. He was appointed a lecturer at the University of Ghana's law faculty upon his return to Ghana in 1974. Kwamena Ahwoi, Alban Bagbin, a previous majority leader in the Ghanaian parliament and the current speaker of the eighth parliament, and Freddie Blay, a former first deputy speaker, were among his pupils.
Tsikata has advised some well-known individuals over the years.
He defended Samuel Okudjeto and William Ofori Atta during the time of the National Redemption Council/Supreme Military Council military regimes of Acheampong. Both men were on trial for political offenses.
He represented Jerry Rawlings in the treason trial that followed the May 15 Rebellion in 1979, but it was cut short when the SMC military regime commanded by Fred Akuffo was deposed on June 4 of the same year.
He served as the National Democratic Congress's (NDC) lead attorney in a petition for an election in Ghana. During the first-ever electoral petition trial brought by the opposition New Patriotic Party contesting the outcomes of the 2012 elections, he served as the NDC's primary attorney. To become the third respondent in this case, the NDC submitted a joinder.
National Petroleum Corporation of Ghana
From October 1988 to December 2000, Tsikata served as the GNPC's Chief Executive under the leadership of the NDC, which was in power at the time and was led by Jerry Rawlings.
Tsikata was tried after a trial through the Accra Fast Track Tribunal, one of many established by the Kufuor government to try similar matters, for causing financial loss of GH230,000 to the state while serving as CEO of the Ghana National Petroleum Company. The six-year trial began in 2002 and ended in 2006. On June 18, 2008, Mrs. Judge Hernrietta Abban found him guilty.
The trial is thought to have taken the longest in the history of the nation to include a former official. While supporters of Tsikata's National Democratic Congress and supporters of President Kufuor's New Patriotic Party government celebrated this as a victory for the legal system, many who supported Tsikata's opponents saw the trial as being politically motivated.
The "Free Tsatsu Movement" was created as a result of this. On his last day in office, after his party, the National Patriotic Party, lost the 2008 Ghanaian presidential election, then-President John Kufuor unconditionally pardoned him. He was being treated at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital at the time for a severe asthma attack while being kept under prison surveillance.
Tsatsu Tsikata turned down the presidential pardon and later declared at a conference that he believed it was not given in good faith and that he would pursue legal action to clear his name.
Tsikata was granted bail by Justice Edward Amoako Asante at an Accra Fast-Track high court on January 13, 2009, after rejecting the presidential pardon. This meant that he was no longer required to be in jail, even though he was still admitted to the hospital due to his asthmatic attack.
On November 30, 2016, he was found not guilty by an appeals court presided over by Justice Dennis Adjei after eight years of being accused of causing the state financial harm and his five years in prison were overturned.
Individual Life
Tsikata is a deacon at the Asbury Dunwell Church in Accra and a Christian. He has a history of asthma, which is likely what kept him from participating in extracurricular activities and attending school when he was younger. He suffered a severe asthma attack in 2008, which sent him from the Nsawam prisons to urgent care.
One of Tsikata's seven siblings. His father was retired United Africa Company Textile Sales Manager Godwin Kwaku-Sru Tsikata (UAC). He is wed to Esther Cobbah, and the two of them have three kids. One of his offspring is the Grammy-winning musician M.anifest from Ghana.