Ghana’s shortest-ever-serving president, Nii Amaa Ollennu, is associated with a little-known legal case in which a man was imprisoned after authorities discovered he was using three different identities.

The case emerged during a period when the state was cracking down on identity fraud and the misuse of official documents.

The individual was found to be operating under three separate names, raising concerns about impersonation, deception and the potential abuse of public records.

Authorities argued that the use of multiple identities was intended to mislead government institutions and the public.

At the time, courts treated the matter as a criminal offence linked to false representation rather than a simple issue of name changes.

This article was first published on GhanaWeb on February 19, 2023

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Why Ghana’s shortest-ever-serving president jailed a man for bearing 3 different names

Nii Amaa Ollennu became the only person in Ghana's history to have been president for not more than a month.

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But before that, he was a judge and in one of his cases, which was reported on by the Daily Graphic on September 9, 1958, he handed down a judgment to a man in a case of multiple identities.

According to a clipping from the newspaper, the man, John Kwame Kwesi, of Takoradi, fell on the wrong side of the law for bearing three different names.

The names of the man, as the paper reported, were John Kwame Kwesi, Joseph Kwesi Fynn, and Billy Wilde.

After analysing the case and the evidence provided, Justice Nii Amaa Ollennu, who later became president of Ghana, handed down a four years' imprisonment sentence to the man, to be run concurrently on each count of attempted house-breaking.

"A man with three different names has been sentenced to four years' imprisonment by Mr. Justice Nii Amaa Ollennu at the Sekondi Assize Court after pleading guilty to a charge of escaping from lawful custody.

"He is John Kwame Kwesi of Takoradi, also known as Joseph Kwesi Fynn, and at times called Billy Wilde.

"Kwame Kwesi was found guilty on another charge of attempted house-breaking. On each count, he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, sentences to run concurrently,” the ruling stated.

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