Dormaahene Must Be Promptly Removed from the High Court

I have already written about the subject of the flagrantly unprofessional conduct of the Omanhene of the Dormaa-Ahenkro Traditional Area, in the present Akufo-Addo-created Bono Region, and therefore will not spend any more of my very limited and precious time in belaboring the same, once more, except to reiterate the imperative need for the Gertrude Torkornoo-presided Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG) and the Ghana Judicial Council (GJC) or the General Legal Council (GLC), I forget which, and the National Judicial Establishment (NJE), as a whole, to heed the wise counsel of Mr. Sam Okudzeto, the highly respected former President of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), to promptly remove Justice Daniel Mensah – aka Osagyefo Oseadeeyo Agyeman-Badu, II, from his Bench on the High Court of Ghana.

Indeed, even as the Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr. K T Hammond, recently underscored in the wake of the James Gyakye Quayson parliamentary reelection faux-pas, the Dormaahene has more than amply demonstrated that he abjectly lacks the requisite professional sense of balance and objectivity and the integrity to preside over cases in any legitimately constituted court of the land (See “Dormaahene Is an NDC Person; He Sings to NDC Tune All the Time – K T Hammond” Modernghana.com 7/6/23). There is more than ample and readily accessible evidence indicating the untenable fact of the Dormaahene’s being a brazen political agitator and diehard propagandist for the leadership of the country’s main opposition political party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Now, what the foregoing means is that Justice Mensah cannot be counted upon to interpret the law and administer justice with the requisite mental temperament and judicative poise expected of a judge or a magistrate of the Superior Court. Even more significant is the imperative need for the relevant department of our National Judicial Establishment to launch a thorough investigative review of all the cases adjudicated by the Dormaamanhene, whose invested Chieftaincy status ought to have expressly and summarily disqualified him from serving on any legitimately constituted court of the land, besides our indigenous or traditional court system, popularly known as the Palace Courts. Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution makes a clear-cut distinction between the functional operation of The Church (or Religion and Culture) and the State, as clearly defined in our heavily Western-influenced postcolonial system of governance.

The Dormaamanhene is, absolutely without a doubt, well aware of this statutory provision. And while, indeed, one may cogently argue in favor of exceptional cases, and there are quite a considerable number of them throughout the country, to be certain, still, one is inclined to suppose and/or suspect that Nana Agyeman-Badu, II, has more than amply demonstrated that he does not absolutely in any way fall among the category of either the exceptional cases or among individual legal and judicial lights or luminaries so designated. The Dormaahene’s decision to so egregiously wade into the Gyakye Quayson dual citizenship criminal indictment by the Supreme Court of Ghana, constituted the very height of gross professional incompetence and one that cannot be taken lightly, in view of the fact that Justice Mensah has been duly sworn and endowed with powers that enable him to significantly affect and influence the destiny and the fortunes of all Ghanaian citizens and residents who appear before his Court.

Our present democratic cultural dispensation can ill-afford the wanton liabilities that come with seating a brazen and impenitent, to speak less about a downright irresponsible, partisan political propagandist on the bench of courts that are counted upon and expected to deliver justice without prejudice or regard to the political and ideological suasion of the subject of judicial scrutiny and possible chastisement or discipline with far-reaching consequences.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]