Asantehene cautions judges and lawyers on chieftaincy law
The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, has urged members of the Bench and Bar to be well versed in the laws governing the chieftaincy institution.
Citing Article 270 of Ghana’s current constitution, the 1992 Constitution, Otumfuo Osei Tutu said the 1992 Constitution was clear and decisive, guaranteed the freedom of the chieftaincy institution, together with the Traditional Councils established under customary law.
The 1992 Constitution, he said, also expressly barred Parliament from legislating in a manner that would detract from or derogate from the honour and dignity of the chieftaincy institution.
Otumfuo Osei Tutu II said this constitutional guarantee must serve as notice to all persons, particularly those on the Bench and at the Bar who were not intimately familiar with the laws concerning chieftaincy, that the institution was not merely tolerated within the country's modern constitutional order but entrenched within it as a core part of the nation's governance architecture.
The Asantehene gave the caution in Kumasi at a lecture organised to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Ghana, held under the theme: “The Supreme Court and the Institution of Chieftaincy: The Past, Present and Future.”
Tracing the historical relationship between the two institutions, the Asantehene said long before the colonial courtroom was established, chieftaincy stood as a principal organ of governance, justice and social order, with the chief serving as supreme priest, judge, custodian of land and symbol of continuity between the living, the dead and the unborn.
He said disputes in that era were settled beneath the “great tree” and before the stool or skin, through processes that prized reconciliation over retribution and communal harmony over the narrow vindication of legal rights.
The Asantehene noted that the advent of colonial rule introduced a parallel stream of authority in the form of English Common law, with the Supreme Court eventually becoming its apex.
According to him, the two systems of authority ran uneasily alongside one another for much of the country's colonial history, with chieftaincy at various points courted and co-opted through indirect rule, even as its judicial functions were curtailed.
He said the tension was inherited rather than resolved at independence in 1957, with successive constitutions grappling uncertainly with the place of chieftaincy within a modern constitutional order, recalling that laws had, at different times, been enacted to withdraw recognition from persons validly installed as chiefs under customary law, just as other enactments conferred recognition on persons who did not qualify as chiefs under customary usage.
Otumfuo Osei Tutu II said chieftaincy had nonetheless endured through these episodes of political interference, precisely because it commanded a legitimacy that no statute alone could confer.
He expressed the hope that the continuing work of Traditional Councils and the Judicial Committees of the Houses of Chiefs would help further define the relationship between the two institutions going forward.
GNA