Ghana’s Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood retires from public service today, Wednesday June 7, 2017.
A thanksgiving service graced by notables in the judiciary and legislature included the new Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo; Justice Jones Dotse; the Speaker of Parliament, Professor Michael Oquaye; the Minority Leader, Haruna Idrissu, among others was held in her honour at the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Accra.
Mrs Wood is replaced by Justice Akuffo.
After her official retirement on June 8, 2017, Georgina Wood will become a member of the council of state, since the advisory council to the President must also include a former Chief Justice.
Mrs. Wood was the first female Chief Justice of Ghana, and the longest-serving Chief Justice, since her appointment in 2007 by former President JA Kufuor.
Her appointment made her the most powerful woman in Ghana’s political history for a time, till the appointment of Justice Joyce Adeline Bamford-Addo as the first female Speaker of the 5th Parliament of Ghana in January 2009.
Georgina Wood worked with the Ghana Police Service as a deputy superintendent and public prosecutor for three years before joining the Judicial Service as a District Magistrate in 1974.
She rose through the Circuit and High Courts to become the presiding judge of the Appeal Court in 1991, and was then appointed to the Supreme Court on November 12, 2002.
