Aaron Mike Oquaye (born 4 April 1944) is a Ghanaian barrister and politician who served as the sixth Speaker of Parliament of the Fourth Republic of Ghana from 2017 to 2021.
[1][2] An academic, diplomat and Baptist minister, he previously held the cabinet ministerial portfolios for energy and communication and was also the High Commissioner of Ghana to India (2002–04) in the Kufuor administration.
Okyenhene Nana Ofori Atta II, while in exile in Accra, was also a regular visitor to the Oquaye family home in Asamankese.
He is a barrister of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, a senior member of the Ghana Bar Association, and a solicitor for some leading companies and financial institutions.
As a writer, Oquaye has researched and published writings extensively on good governance, conflicts, political education, decentralization and development, human rights, military intervention in politics, NGOs, rural development and gender issues.
Oquaye strongly supported Busia's call for quick return to civilian rule to prevent the militarization of the state and, along with his family, helped to establish the Progress Party in Osu in 1969.
He worked with other central NPP figures, including President John Kufuor, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, R. R. Amponsah, Prof. Adu-Boahen, Peter Ala Adjetey, B. J. da Rocha and Samuel Odoi-Sykes, to campaign successfully for the NPP victory in the 2000 general elections.
He sponsored his son, Mike Oquaye Jnr, to fight to be the NPP Parliamentary Candidate for the constituency.
[9][10] In 2021, he was renominated by the New Patriotic Party for the role, but he lost to opposition candidate, Alban Kingsford Sumani Bagbin.
Oquaye's hobbies include watching football, playing table tennis, reading books, writing, and listening to music.
[13][14][15] In August 2020, he gave a public lecture in the observance of Founders' Day, in which he claimed that "Independence was not a one man show, it was a collective effort".