President Mahama Must Make Sophia Akuffo’s Resignation Letter Public

Asaase Radio 99.5 reported online on 14 June 2026 the tendering of the resignation of Ms. Justice Sophia Akuffo from the Council of State since last year. The news report stated, inter alia, as follows:

“Former Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo has resigned from Ghana’s Council of State, according to sources familiar with the matter, ending her tenure on the presidential advisory body. Akuffo, ... is understood to have tendered her resignation last year and has not attended any meetings of the Council of State since then. Neither Akuffo nor the presidency immediately commented on the resignation, and the circumstances surrounding her decision were not publicly disclosed.”

The sovereign people of Ghana, in whose name and for whose welfare the powers of government are to be exercised in the manner and within the limits laid down in the 1992 Constitution, are entitled to the expectation that all governments exercising power pursuant to the constitution will exhibit the highest degree of probity, accountability, and transparency towards the electorate.

Consequently, if it is, indeed, true that Ms. Justice Sophia Akuffo tendered her resignation to the President last year, and ceased to perform the duties of a member of the Council of State in her capacity of a former Chief Justice, then the Government owes the sovereign people of Ghana an explanation for its refusal or failure to make her resignation public. The information, coming as it does as a scoop, from Asaase Radio to the public creates the impression that the government is purposefully withholding the information because a disclosure might damage the image of the government.

Now that Asaase Radio has let the cat out of the bag, President Mahama should not only confirm the resignation but also publicly disclose the content of her resignation letter for the public to be judge for themselves whether the grounds of her resignation are reasonable and justified. More damage may occasion to the government should it allow the contents of the resignation letter to be leaked to the public from some other source just as the Asaase Radio news report has done with the scoop.

Ms. Sophia Akuffo was proposed for nomination to the Supreme Court three times within the period of the PNDC and NDC before her name was endorsed as a nominee by the NDC government of President Rawlings for submission to Parliament. Ms. Akuffo had zero experience of court room advocacy or real public service. The Ghana Bar Association, the NPP, and others opposed her nomination in 1995 and these are available in the media publications of the period.

Before then, Ms. Sophia Akuffo had been appointed the Chairperson of the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority by the PNDC in 1989 and she continued to serve in that capacity alongside her position as a Supreme Court Justice until the NDC government exited office in in 2001.

When the political landscape changed after 7 January 2001, she told me in open court that the then Attorney-General, Nana Akufo-Addo is her cousin and questioned why I was not objecting to her sitting on my case, Amidu v John Agyekum Kufour & Others, as I was objecting to the then Acting Chief Justice sitting on the same case. I ignored the ingratiating family relationship question as the grounds of objection I had filed in court against the Acting Chief Justice’s participation in the hearing were not based on family relationship.

Nonetheless, when the NDC returned to government in 2009, she worked her way to be endorsed by the government to serve on the African Court of Human Rights. Upon completion of her tenure and return to Ghana, her cousin, Nana Akufo-Addo who had become President of Ghana nominated her over the most senior justice of the Supreme Court as Chief Justice. The President, however, consistently refused to act on petitions for her removal from office under Article 146 of the Constitution as Chief Justice as mandated by law.

President Mahama knows why he appointed her to the Council of State and who advised him to do so. Ms. Justice Akuffo’s behaviour since the emergence of petitions to remove her successor, Mrs. Justice Gertrude Torkornoo as Chief Justice, and her open involvement political advocacy as a member of the Council of State demonstrates that she lacks the comportment of a former Chief Justice.

I criticized Ms. Justice Akuffo’s participation in the Constitutional Review Committee meeting organized at the IEA and other fora dealing with the removal of her successor. I had expected her to have resigned on account of her publicized views on the petitions for the removal of her successor, also appointed by her cousin, Nana Akufo-Addo, as Chief Justice.

In my view, Mrs. Torkornoo’s was unfit for the position of Chief Justice. I, however, have problems with the refusal or failure by the government to disclose to the public, post facto, the report of the removal committee justifying her removal from office.

The public is entitled to know the reasons Ms. Justice Akuffo assigned for her resignation to enable us to determine what the government had done to warrant the unprecedented step of a former Chief Justice resigning from the Council of State in the history of the 1992 Constitution. The Government also owes the people of Ghana an explanation for the delay in disclosing and informing the public of the tendering of her resignation.

It may well be that the government intended to engage her formally before accepting her resignation. But almost six months since the close of the year 2025 is an unacceptable lengthy period to continue withholding such information from the public, particularly when she had ceased performing the functions of a member of the Council of State.

I can understand that the government has challenges with her resignation in terms of replacing her with another former Chief Justice willing to accept the offer to do so. In that case the government is under no compulsion to replace her with any unwilling former Chief Justice.

The resignation of Ms. Justice Akuffo is a shot across the bow for President Mahama’s government. It demonstrates the lack of due diligence in the NDC government’s appointment process. It also shows a failure of intelligence, first, from the security and intelligence agencies, and secondly, from those former PNDC and NDC operatives, knowledgeable about the historical facts, still pretending to advise the President in making appointments.

The consequences of Ms. Justice Akuffo’s resignation, the manner it was managed by the government, and the timing of the leak to the public coming from Asaase Radio, demonstrates a dangerous dysfunction within the NDC government machinery of President Mahama. A stitch in time save nine!

Martin A. B. K. Amidu 14 June 2026