Matters Arising from the Republic (on the application of Peter Archibold Hyde) v. Office of the Special Prosecutor

This case presents a deceptively simple but far-reaching question: whether the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) may prosecute offences in the name of the Republic without a separate, express authorization from the Attorney-General (AG). The High Court answered that question in the negative. It held that Article 88(4) of the Constitution, read together with section 4(2) of the OSP Act, requires specific authorization by the AG as a precondition to the OSP’s exercise of prosecutorial power. Because the OSP failed to demonstrate such authorization, the court declared its prosecutions unlawful, ordered the AG to take over all pending cases, and voided prior convictions obtained by the Office.

The decision arose from a quo warranto application challenging the legal basis of the OSP’s authority, coupled with requests for broad declaratory and injunctive relief. Rejecting objections on timeliness and jurisdiction, the court proceeded on the view that the relevant constitutional and statutory provisions were clear and required no referral to the Supreme Court. On the merits, it concluded that the OSP’s mandate under its enabling statute does not, by itself, constitute sufficient authorization. Instead, the court reasoned that prosecutorial authority must be conferred through a formal act of delegation, such as an Executive Instrument, consistent with existing practice under section 56 of Act 30.

This reasoning led the court to a sweeping conclusion: absent express authorization by the AG, the OSP has been acting without lawful authority. It is this conclusion, and the interpretive path that produced it, that is the basis of this commentary.

I start by acknowledging that the ruling is bold, dramatic, and internally confident. But it is also highly vulnerable. In plain terms, it is the kind of judgment that sounds forceful on first reading, yet raises very serious legal and institutional problems on closer inspection.

It has several strengths. First, it takes constitutional text seriously. The judge refuses to let enthusiasm for anti-corruption institutions override Article 88’s language. That is a real judicial virtue. Second, it insists that public power must have a lawful source. That is a healthy rule-of-law instinct. If an institution is exercising coercive criminal power, a court is entitled to ask exactly where that power comes from. Third, it recognizes hierarchy of norms. An ordinary statute cannot casually displace entrenched constitutional design. That is also correct in principle.

Having said that, it is also apparent that the court adopts an unduly narrow view of how legality may be supplied within a constitutional framework. Even more troubling is the judge’s introduction of political speculation into what is fundamentally a legal question. The court suggests that because Article 88 is entrenched, the creation of the OSP may have been driven by a desire to fulfill a campaign promise through “legislative gymnastics” designed to avoid the constitutional amendment process.

By invoking political motivations, the court shifts from legal interpretation to a normative critique of legislative policy, which is not the function of a trial court exercising judicial review. Moreover, the suggestion that the OSP’s creation reflects an attempt to circumvent Article 88 tends to prejudge the very issue the court was required to determine.

The reasoning therefore moves beyond interpretation and into conjecture. It attributes motive where the legal inquiry requires analysis. In doing so, it risks undermining the neutrality of the exercise and weakens what would otherwise be a serious constitutional argument. In simple terms the judge did not just interpret the law. He speculated about why it was made. But courts are supposed to decide whether a law fits within the Constitution, not second-guess the politics behind it.

1) The court blurs the critical distinction between facts and law in its timing analysis

The court’s conclusion on timeliness is intuitively appealing, but doctrinally problematic. The judge accepted the applicant’s argument that time began to run not from the filing of the charge sheet, but from the applicant’s awareness of the alleged illegality. He reasoned that a person should not be deprived of the opportunity to challenge an unlawful act before becoming aware of it. At a general level, that instinct is sound. Courts are rightly reluctant to allow limitation rules to defeat claims where the underlying defect was genuinely hidden.

But the analysis in this case blurs a critical distinction: the difference between knowledge of facts and knowledge of law. In orthodox legal doctrine, time may be extended where a litigant lacks knowledge of material facts that could not reasonably have been discovered earlier. However, ignorance of the law, or a later appreciation of a legal argument, does not ordinarily delay the running of time.

That distinction matters here. The applicant did not discover a new fact, such as a concealed document, a hidden authorization, or a previously unavailable piece of evidence. The relevant facts were always publicly available: the existence of the OSP, the absence (allegedly) of an Executive Instrument, and the governing constitutional and statutory provisions.

What changed in December 2025 was not the factual landscape, but the applicant’s legal conclusion that those facts rendered the OSP’s prosecutions unlawful. By treating awareness of alleged illegality as the trigger for time, the court effectively shifts the inquiry from knowledge of facts to knowledge of law. That is a significant doctrinal move.

If taken seriously, it risks undermining the certainty that limitation rules are designed to provide, since a litigant could always argue that the clock starts only when they come to appreciate the legal significance of known facts.

A more defensible approach would have been to ask whether any new or previously undiscoverable fact emerged to justify the delayed application, or to ground the decision in narrower doctrines such as continuing illegality. Instead, the court adopts a broader principle that is difficult to contain.

In simple terms, the judge is right that you should not be shut out of court because something was hidden from you. But here, nothing was hidden. What changed was not the facts, it was the argument.

2) The court may have understated the constitutional nature of the dispute

Ironically, although the judge insisted this was not a constitutional-interpretation matter, the substance of the ruling is deeply constitutional. He effectively decided:

•⁠ ⁠the meaning of Article 88(4),
•⁠ ⁠the limits of Parliament’s power to structure prosecutorial institutions,

•⁠ ⁠whether Act 959 can validly empower the OSP without further AG action,

•⁠ ⁠whether L.I. 2374 matters as part of that authorization framework, and

•⁠ ⁠whether reading the Act robustly would amount to an indirect constitutional amendment.

Those are not routine housekeeping questions. They go to the design of the constitutional order. This is precisely the type of situation contemplated in Ex parte Akosah, which provides the now-settled four-tier test for determining when a constitutional interpretation issue arises requiring referral to the Supreme Court.

Under that framework, the interpretation jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is triggered where:

(a) the words of a constitutional provision are imprecise, unclear, or ambiguous;

(b) rival meanings are placed by the parties on the provision;

(c) there is a conflict in the meaning and effect of two or more constitutional provisions; or

(d) there is a conflict in the operation of constitutional institutions, raising problems of enforcement and interpretation.

On any fair reading, this case satisfies multiple limbs of the Akosah test. First, rival meanings were clearly placed on Article 88(4). The applicant argued for a narrow, express, case-by-case authorization model, while the OSP advanced a broader, structural authorization model grounded in statute and regulatory design. That squarely triggers limb (b).

Second, there is a direct institutional conflict. The case pits the AG’s constitutionally recognized prosecutorial authority against a statutorily created anti-corruption prosecutor designed to operate with a degree of independence. That is a textbook example of limb (d): a conflict in the operation of constitutional institutions raising problems of enforcement and interpretation.

Third, the court’s own reasoning demonstrates that this is not a case of plain meaning. The effort to reconcile Article 88(4) with Act 959 and determine whether a robust reading amounts to indirect constitutional amendment all point to complexity and ambiguity. That brings the matter within limb (a), if not also limb (c) in its broader structural sense.

There is an additional and telling point. The reliefs sought by the applicant themselves explicitly invited constitutional interpretation. In particular:

•⁠ ⁠Relief (b) sought “a declaration that, on a proper interpretation of Article 88(4) of the 1992 Constitution and section 4(2) of Act 959, the OSP may prosecute only subject to and upon authorization by the Attorney-General”; and

•⁠ ⁠Relief (c) sought a declaration that, in the absence of such authorization, the OSP’s exercise of prosecutorial power is unconstitutional, unlawful, null and void.

It is therefore difficult to maintain that no interpretation question arose when the court was directly asked to determine the “proper interpretation” of a constitutional provision and its interaction with a statute. Further, without prejudice to this analysis, the court ought to have taken judicial notice of the broader constitutional context, including the existence of a pending Supreme Court challenge to the constitutionality of the OSP. That alone should have counseled caution.

Where the apex court is already seized with related constitutional questions, a trial court should be slow to issue sweeping determinations that effectively pre-empt or prejudge those issues. In short, this is not a situation where the court is merely applying clear constitutional text to straightforward facts. It is one where competing interpretations, institutional tensions, and structural consequences are central.

So even if the High Court was formally entitled to begin the analysis, a strong argument exists that, applying the Akosah framework, the matter should have been referred to the Supreme Court for authoritative determination. The ultimate resolution of these issues belongs at the apex court.

If all this seems too convoluted, the judge said, “this case does not require constitutional interpretation.” But the parties themselves asked the court to interpret the Constitution, and the case raises exactly the kind of institutional conflict that only the Supreme Court is designed to settle.

3) The use of quo warranto is doctrinally strained and outcome-distorting

The court’s reliance on quo warranto as the central remedy is one of the most vulnerable aspects of the judgment. Quo warranto asks a very specific question: Who gave you the legal authority to occupy this office or exercise this public franchise?

Traditionally, it is used to challenge whether a person is lawfully holding a public office. For example, whether someone was validly appointed as a DCE, a board member, or a public officer. It is concerned with title to office, not the correctness of how powers under that office are exercised. But lawfully holding office is not the real issue in this case. No one seriously disputes that:

The OSP was validly created by Act 959; and ⁠the Special Prosecutor lawfully occupies that office. The real dispute is whether the OSP requires an additional step, namely express AG authorization, before exercising prosecutorial power already conferred by statute?

That is not a question about whether the OSP is entitled to exist. It is a question about the scope and conditions of the powers it exercises. In doctrinal terms, this is the difference between ⁠a challenge to title to office (quo warranto), and ⁠a challenge to the legality of the exercise of power (ultra vires or judicial review). The case at bar) clearly falls into the second category.

By recasting the issue as one of quo warranto, the court effectively asked the OSP to “prove its existence” as a lawful prosecutorial authority, rather than addressing the more precise question of whether its exercise of prosecutorial power required an additional formal step.

That move matters because the choice of remedy shapes the outcome. Once the court adopts a quo warranto lens, the logic becomes: (i) no sufficient authority shown; therefore, no lawful basis to act; and ⁠therefore, all actions taken are void.

That reasoning naturally leads to the sweeping consequences the court embraced, including the invalidation of ongoing prosecutions and past convictions. But if the issue had been framed in its proper doctrinal category, namely as a question of whether the OSP’s prosecutorial power was properly conditioned or procedurally complete, the remedial landscape would look very different. The court could have (i) clarified the nature of the required authorization (if any); (ii) ⁠required compliance going forward; or (iii) ⁠granted more tailored relief tied to specific proceedings. Instead, the use of quo warranto transformed what might have been a correctable issue into a system-wide collapse of prosecutorial validity.

Closely related to this is the failure to grapple with the stabilizing principle that acts performed by a public authority, even where defects later emerge, are not always automatically void, particularly where legal certainty and reliance interests are at stake. Interested readers could read upon the prospective overruling doctrine.

By declaring prior convictions void without engaging that concern, the court prioritizes formal authorization over institutional stability in a way that is difficult to justify.

In simple terms, the court used a legal tool designed to ask: “Do you have the right to sit in this seat?” to answer a different question: "are you using the powers of that seat in the right way?” That mismatch not only weakens the doctrinal foundation of the decision, but also helps explain why the remedy is so unusually sweeping.

4) The biggest weakness: the court assumes the very point in dispute

The central difficulty with the ruling is not simply its conclusion, but how it gets there. The court’s reasoning proceeds as though one key premise were already settled: that the OSP requires a separate authorization from the AG, in the form of an Executive Instrument.

But that is precisely the issue in dispute. The judgment moves from an observation about administrative practice to a conclusion about legal necessity. Because other agencies often receive prosecutorial authority through Executive Instruments, the court treats that pathway as the required model for the OSP. Yet that conclusion does not follow unless one first establishes that the OSP falls within that same delegation framework.

That prior step is never seriously undertaken. Because the Court assumes a form of delegation, it never contemplates the deeper question of whether the legal architecture already provides the required authorization.

Article 88(4) permits prosecutions by persons authorized “in accordance with law.” Parliament, acting under that provision, enacted Act 959 to create a specialized anti-corruption prosecutor with investigative and prosecutorial functions. That statute is not silent; it is complemented by a detailed regulatory framework in L.I. 2374, made by the AG under section 78 of the Act. Regulation 11 expressly provides that the Special Prosecutor or an authorized officer shall decide whether or not to prosecute.

In other words, the very “authorization” the court demands may already be embedded in the statutory and regulatory scheme. The judgment largely bypasses this possibility. It does not squarely confront whether Act 959, read together with L.I. 2374, constitutes the “law” contemplated by Article 88(4). Instead, it assumes that authorization must take the familiar form of an Executive Instrument and evaluates the OSP against that assumption.

That is a classic question-begging move. The court assumes that prosecutorial authority must be conferred through Executive Instrument and then treats the absence of such an instrument as dispositive, without first addressing whether the statutory framework itself supplies that authority. In doing so, it also relies on a weak analogy, treating the OSP as if it were indistinguishable from ordinary agencies that apply for delegated prosecutorial powers.

Even more strikingly, the judgment does not engage L.I. 2374 at all, despite the fact that it is the AG’s own regulatory instrument made under Act 959 and expressly addresses prosecutorial decision-making within the Office. The absence of any discussion of that framework underscores the court’s failure to confront whether authorization already exists “in accordance with law.” Had the court undertaken that inquiry, it would have had to reckon with Regulation 11, which vests prosecutorial decision-making in the Special Prosecutor or an authorized officer.

Section 56 of the Criminal Procedures Act, on which the court relies (see below), contemplates delegation by Executive Instrument to agents of the AG. Act 959 reflects a different model: statutory authorization, supplemented by regulations promulgated by the Attorney-General under the Act.

In that context, L.I. 2374 does not operate as a mere delegation device, but as part of the legal framework through which prosecutorial authority is structured and exercised within the Office. Confusing the two collapses an instrument designed to implement, detail, and operationalize primary legislation into a single-purpose administrative delegation tool.

That is precisely the court’s error. And it is fatal!

In everyday terms, the court treats the OSP like a guest who still needs a formal invitation to enter. But a more persuasive reading is that Parliament has already built the room, the AG has helped furnish it, and the regulations explain how it is to operate. The real question is not whether a separate invitation was issued, but whether the legal framework already entitles the OSP to be there. Having identified the logical defect in the court’s reasoning, let me next discuss the doctrinal framework the court used to sustain that reasoning.

5) The judgment then compounds that error by relying on the wrong legal framework

The judgment reinforces its conclusion by relying heavily on section 56 of the Criminal and Other Offences (Procedure) Act, 1960 (Act 30), and on the established practice of delegating prosecutorial authority through Executive Instruments. As a description of administrative practice, this is largely accurate. Public institutions often apply to the AG for authority to prosecute, which is then granted and formalized through an Executive Instrument under section 56.

But that is not the situation here, and treating it as such introduces a fundamental analytical error. Section 56 operates within a delegation model. It governs how the AG appoints public prosecutors who act as his agents, either generally or for specific matters. It presupposes that authority flows from the AG to individuals or institutions upon request, and that those actors remain extensions of his office.

The text itself makes this clear. Section 56 empowers the AG to “appoint… public officers to be public prosecutors” by Executive Instrument. The AG "may give express directions to the public prosecutor." That language describes a model of delegation to individuals acting as agents of the AG; it does not contemplate the creation of a statutory prosecutorial office with an independent mandate defined by Parliament.

The OSP does not fit that model. It is not an applicant seeking permission to prosecute. It is a statutory office created by Parliament pursuant to Article 88(4), with a defined mandate to investigate and prosecute corruption and corruption-related offences.

Its institutional design reflects a deliberate choice to establish a specialized prosecutor operating within the constitutional framework, but not reducible to ad hoc appointments under the AG’s administrative machinery under section 56. The AG can delegate prosecutorial power; he cannot, by executive instrument, create a prosecutorial institution. That is the work of Parliament.

Section 56 speaks to delegation within the AG’s administrative structure. Act 959 speaks to institutional design under Article 88(4), which permits prosecutions by persons authorized “in accordance with law.”

Conflating the two collapses the distinction between agents of the AG and a statutory prosecutor created by law. Section 56 itself reinforces this distinction. It is expressly made “subject to article 88 of the Constitution.” It cannot exhaust the forms that prosecutorial authority may take under that Article.

Article 88(4) contemplates a broader category: persons authorized “in accordance with law.” Act 959, read together with its implementing regulations, is precisely such a law. When Parliament acts under Article 88(4) to authorize prosecutions “in accordance with law,” it does not displace the AG’s constitutional role. It structures the manner in which that authority is exercised by creating an additional, legally defined pathway for prosecution. Properly understood, such legislation operates within the constitutional scheme, not against it.

This is especially so where the statutory design responds to a compelling institutional concern, such as the risk of conflict of interest in the investigation and prosecution of corruption. In that context, the creation of a specialized prosecutor is not a derogation from the AG’s role, but a constitutionally permitted mechanism to ensure that prosecutorial power is exercised effectively and credibly.

To treat section 56 as controlling is therefore to collapse two distinct legal arrangements into one. It converts a mechanism of administrative convenience into a rigid constitutional requirement. That reading also produces implausible consequences. If section 56 were the exclusive pathway for conferring prosecutorial authority, there would have been no need for Parliament to enact Act 959 at all.

The AG could simply appoint “special prosecutors” by Executive Instrument whenever needed. The existence of the OSP Act signals a different legislative intention: to create a structured, enduring institution rather than rely on episodic delegation. Even within Act 30, the broader language of section 58, which allows prosecutions to be instituted “by or on behalf of the Attorney-General,” is capable of accommodating institutional arrangements grounded in statute.

Properly understood, section 56 tells us how the AG may delegate prosecutorial authority within his administrative structure. It does not answer the separate and prior question whether Parliament may establish a prosecutorial office whose authority is defined by statute within the meaning of Article 88(4).

The court’s reliance on section 56 therefore rests on a category mistake. It applies a rule designed for delegated agents to a statutory institution created on an entirely different footing. In simple terms, section 56 is a rule about how a manager assigns tasks to assistants who ask for work. The OSP is not such an assistant. It is an office the system itself created, with its own mandate. The relevant question is not whether the manager issued a memo under that rule, but whether the office was lawfully established and empowered to perform its functions.

6.⁠ ⁠The ruling may misread section 4(2) of the OSP Act

Section 4(2) says the Office shall, for purposes of the Act, be authorized by the AG to prosecute corruption offences. The judge read that as demanding a distinct extra step before any prosecution can ever begin. But there is another reading that is at least as plausible, and probably stronger: Parliament created the OSP through law. The law itself recognizes that prosecutions remain subject to Article 88(4). The AG’s authorization is embedded in the statutory structure, not necessarily in a case-by-case or separate Executive Instrument.

That alternative reading becomes even stronger once you take into account that the statute was enacted to create a specialized anti-corruption prosecutor that is not dependent on the day-to-day discretion of the AG. If the OSP must constantly wait for express AG authorization, the entire architecture starts to collapse into ordinary AG control, no different from section 56 prosecutors.

This is also where the AG’s broader role matters. The AG laid the bill that created the office, the office was structured through the executive-legislative process, the AG made the regulatory framework, and the Special Prosecutor’s position exists within that very architecture.

That makes it harder to say, in a practical and institutional sense, that no authorization exists unless a second, stand-alone permission slip appears. This is the difference between structural authorization and episodic authorization. If you create an independent anti-corruption office but then say it cannot prosecute until the AG separately blesses it, you may have created an office that depends on the very institution it was partly meant to bypass.

7) The judgment underestimates legislative purpose

Courts usually do not read statutes in a way that defeats their evident purpose unless the text clearly forces that result. The long title of Act 959, as quoted by the judge, says the OSP is established to investigate and prosecute corruption offences, and it says this happens on the authority of the AG.

But instead of asking what reading best gives that scheme practical effect, the judge used the long title against the OSP. He treated the phrase “on the authority of the AG” as proof that the OSP has no real operational authority until a separate Executive Instrument appears. That reading reduces the OSP to a shell.

And again, L.I. 2374 matters here. The regulations do not read like a body waiting helplessly for future permission. Nor do they read like the AG is sitting in his office somewhere in Obomeng waiting for an application for authorization from the OSP. They read like a functioning institution with legally defined investigative and prosecutorial processes, including the power of the Special Prosecutor or an authorized officer to decide whether to prosecute (see regulation 11, which the judge does not cite).

A better question would have been: What construction preserves both Article 88 and Parliament’s decision to establish a specialized anti-corruption prosecutor? The ruling does not seriously engage that institutional design question.

8) The constitutional-amendment analysis may be overdrawn

The judge says Act 959 cannot be interpreted to put the OSP “at par” with the AG because that would indirectly amend entrenched constitutional provisions without using the amendment procedure. That is a contrived problem built on a false premise. No one places the OSP on par with the Attorney-General. The statute does not elevate the OSP to constitutional equivalence; it simply creates a structured mechanism for exercising prosecutorial authority in a defined area.

There is a major difference between creating a second AG, which would indeed look like a constitutional amendment, and creating a statutory prosecutor who operates under a legal framework consistent with Article 88(4), which expressly allows prosecutions by “any other person authorised by him in accordance with law.” The latter does not amend Article 88. It cannot! It may simply operationalize it. In other words, the Constitution itself contemplates prosecution by persons other than the AG, provided the arrangement is grounded in law. So the key legal question is not whether the OSP mirrors the AG, but whether the statutory and regulatory design is a valid form of authorized prosecution under Article 88(4).

The judgment hopelessly blurs those two very different questions.

9) The remedy is breathtakingly broad
Even if one accepted the judge’s core reasoning, the remedy is startling. He did not merely stop future OSP prosecutions until the issue is clarified. He went further and declared that (a) all ongoing OSP prosecutions must be taken over by the AG; and (b) all prior convictions secured by the OSP are void and must start afresh.

That is an enormous institutional earthquake. This is problematic because serious courts usually think carefully about reliance, finality, fairness to victims, administrative chaos, and the broader public interest before nullifying large numbers of proceedings. There are doctrines in many systems, including functional analogues in common law reasoning, that sometimes preserve past acts of an official body even where there is later doubt about legal authority, especially to protect legal stability.

This judgment shows very little caution on that front. The judge did not just say, “Fix the paperwork going forward.” He said, in effect, “Everything done without it is dead, except that some are not too dead and the AG can take over those." That is a very aggressive judicial remedy.

10) The judgment does not grapple enough with practical constitutional reality

The OSP was created because corruption cases often involve politically exposed persons and because people worry that ordinary executive-controlled prosecution may be compromised or sluggish. The judgment acknowledges that background, but only briefly, and then dismissively refers to campaign-promise-driven “legislative gymnastics.”

That phrase may be rhetorically sharp, but it is not a substitute for careful constitutional reasoning. In fact, it raises questions about the judge's motivation and is an independent ground for reversal. A better judgment would have wrestled more seriously with the tension between constitutional text giving the AG central prosecutorial responsibility, and modern anti-corruption design seeking an institution that can operate with credible independence.

It also should have wrestled with the institutional fact that the AG did not merely stand outside the process. The AG was part of creating the office, shaping its statutory basis, and issuing the operational regulations that govern it. That makes the “no authorization at all” conclusion look more formalistic than realistic. Instead, the ruling largely treats the institutional objective as politically interesting but legally irrelevant.

11) The ruling is textually tidy but structurally thin

The judgment reads as if the answer is obvious from the words alone. But institutional cases like this often require more than dictionary-style reading. They require structural reasoning. The court should have asked:

•⁠ What institutional problem was Act 959 trying to solve?

•⁠ ⁠Can section 4(2) sensibly be read in a way that preserves OSP functionality?

•⁠ ⁠What does “authorized by him in accordance with law” mean when Parliament itself has passed the law creating the prosecutor and the AG has issued regulations to operate it?

•Must authorization always be personalized and express, or can it be office-based and statutory?

The ruling does not dig into these questions with the depth they deserve.

Conclusion
Article 88 vests prosecutorial authority in the AG but it also makes clear that the exercise of that authority is governed by law. That phrase is not decorative. It means the AG’s power is neither absolute nor purely personal. It is also an instruction to Parliament: structure it, regulate it, and operationalize it.

Parliament has done exactly that in multiple ways. Under section 56, Parliament permits the AG to delegate prosecutorial authority through Executive Instruments. That delegation is not inherent; it is statutorily created. The AG operates within a framework designed by law (Act 30). The OSP reflects a different, but equally lawful, design. Instead of requiring the AG to issue an Executive Instrument, Parliament established a standing institution with defined authority to prosecute corruption-related offences.

That design is not only constitutionally permissible; it is a rational response to the very risks the Constitution anticipates, including inaction, conflict of interest, and the need for focused anti-corruption enforcement. To characterize such a framework as an unconstitutional amendment is to read both the statute and the Constitution acontextually, without regard to structure, purpose, or function.

It is like reading Article 88 and the OSP Act without any appreciation of why they have been crafted. It is worse than a literal reading; it is a reading that collapses under the weight of its own absurd consequences. This case rests on a serious rule-of-law concern: Who gave the OSP power to prosecute in the name of the Republic? That is a fair question.

But the judge’s answer is likely too rigid. He treated the absence of a separate formal authorization from the AG as fatal, even though Parliament had already enacted a statute specifically creating the OSP to investigate and prosecute corruption, the AG had made regulations governing how the office prosecutes, and the office itself emerged from a legal and institutional architecture in which the AG played a central role, including nominating the SP.

In doing so, he may have read the Constitution and the OSP Act in a way that drains the OSP of the independence and functionality Parliament meant it to have. The judgment asks the right question, but likely gives the wrong answer, or at least an answer that is too absolute and too destructive. And even if some additional formal authorization were legally required, the sweeping remedy voiding convictions and halting all prosecutions is likely far broader than necessary.

The case is the kind of ruling that almost invites appellate correction.

IT IS FINISHED.
PS: Yɛde post no bɛto hɔ. Yɛnyɛ comprehension consultants.

Da Yie!