The recent summary suspension of Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo by President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama leaves more than much to be desired, in the authoritative words of Prof. Henry Kwasi Prempeh, Executive-Director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD – Ghana), largely and primarily for the simple reason that Ghanaians were not “transparently” let in onto the specific details of the reasons why Mr. Mahama would have the highest-ranking judicial officer of land so rudely and abruptly suspended, while full investigations of the grievances and the charges for which she was being purportedly punished by the President remained undisclosed to the general Ghanaian public (See “CDD boss wants Chief Justice’s removal findings public” Modernghana.com 4/23/25).
So far, in the professionally calibrated opinion of Prof. Prempeh, who also chairs the Mahama-established Constitution Review Committee, charged with studying and making the necessary and the relevant recommendations for the significant improvement in the operation of Ghana’s 1992 Fourth-Republican Constitution, some 32 years on, all that the twice nonconsecutively elected President Mahama has done is to literally insult the intelligence of the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian electorate and the citizenry at large, by bizarrely keeping under wraps the widely alleged petitions to have the University of Ghana and the Golden State University, California, Law Schools-educated legal and judicial luminary of international repute summarily dislodged from the Apex Court, in predictable consonance with what the entire panoply of the politically dictatorial and the faux-democratically minded leadership of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the Prime Mover, to wit, President Mahama, would have the rest of the nation and the membership of the global Ghanaian community believe.
So far, the grim, eerie and peevish irony here is that the contents of the widely reported and publicized petitions alleging gross and egregious professional misconduct against Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo by some three anonymous Ghanaian citizens remain opaquely and hermetically under wraps, although we are also informed by the media that dozens of copies of the petitions have been made available to the members of the Ghana National Council-of-State, a largely advisory and non-binding albeit statutorily sanctioned assembly of a mixture of elected and appointed citizens of renown and repute at the beck and the pleasure of the President, who have reportedly concluded that, indeed, a prima-facie case of gross and egregious professional misconduct has been established by the Mahama Presidency against Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo.
Now, what the preceding means in plain laity language is that the very Ghanaian citizens in whose purportedly civic and national interest Mrs. Sackey-Torkornoo is being so abruptly and rudely removed from the Supreme Court of Ghana, have absolutely no meaningful knowledge or worthwhile inkling about the contents of the petitions predicated upon which the Bole-Bamboi native, from the former President Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, has decided to summarily dismiss the highest-ranking official of the Supreme Court of Ghana. Which unarguably means that, in practical terms, the three alleged petitions could very well have been wholly and thoroughly composed by just one individual implacably vindictive National Democratic Congress’ apparatchik operating out of Jubilee House’s Presidential Suite.
Which is why the urgent call by Prof. Prempeh for President Mahama to immediately disclose at least an aperçu or a brief summary of the details of the contents of the alleged three petitions brought against the Chief Justice could not have been more timely and opportune. Even more significant is the call by Prof. Prempeh for Article 146 of Ghana’s 1992 Democratic and Republican Constitution to be significantly and thoroughly reviewed and revised in order to make any attempt and/or process for the removal of any senior members of the judiciary, including the Chief Justice, more transparent and readily accessible and verifiable by the members of the Ghanaian public.
Equally significant, the former Law Professor of the renowned and prestigious Seton Hall Law School, New Jersey, right here across the Hudson River from New York City, is quick to direct public attention to the flagrant and the downright amateurish manner in which the committee established to probe and examine the alleged three petitions brought against Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo was composed, especially vis-a-vis the decision by Mr. Mahama to allow actively serving superior court jurists who may very well have their own personal grievances and agenda or vendettas against the Chief Justice to serve on the investigative committee.
And for those of us avid observers of both the Fourth Republican Ghanaian Political Scene and, in particular the Kangaroo-like process set up to ensure the curt and the summary removal of Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo, the lightning-swift replacement by the President of the latter with Associate Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie, as the Interim or Acting Chief Justice, comes as decidedly obscene and one that clearly appears to be ideologically tinged or fraught, to say much less about the downright scandalous and insufferably politically motivated.
You see, for several weeks now, some obviously Mahama and National Democratic Congress’ contracted media hacks and goons have been flooding both the media airwaves and cyber portals with dozens of badly composed opinion pieces, luridly salivating over and doggedly promoting the cause of the now-Acting Chief Justice Baffoe-Bonnie in ways that make any intellectually and morally reflective Ghanaian begin to wonder whether the tidal-wave magnitude of the Mahama and the Johnson “The Mosquito” Asiedu-Nketia Posse to have Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo removed from the highest bench of the land, was not wholly and exclusively the dastard and the ungodly handicraft of some Mahama fanatics or “fanfools” eager to have the former globally infamous “Shit-Bombing” late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-appointed Communications Minister effectively commandeer and cannibalize the Judicial Branch of our Three-Pronged Democratic Governance Apparatus of Checks-and-Balances into a veritable adjunct of the fast-creeping Nkrumah-like Mahama dictatorship. You bet progressive-minded Ghanaians are studiously watching; and so are all genuine democratic governance lovers and patriots around the globe.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]
