High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills (21 July 1944 – 24 July 2012) was a Ghanaian politician, a legal scholar, a tax expert and a sports administrator who was President of Ghana from 2009 until his death in 2012. He was inaugurated on 7 January 2009, having defeated the ruling party candidate Nana Akufo-Addo in the 2008 election. He was vice-president from 1997 to 2001 under President Jerry Rawlings, and stood unsuccessfully in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections as the candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). He is the first Ghanaian Head of State to die in office.