Who Is Dr Benjamin Kunbuor?

DR Benjamin Bewa-Nyog Kunbuor is a Member of Parliament with a PhD in Law and coming from a deprived area in Northern Ghana, it is important to know how he made it.

Highly respected in the academic and legal professional circles, many of the students he taught over seven years at the Ghana School of Law see him as an exceptional scholar and teacher.

Indeed, I have not succeeded yet in pinning him down to grant me an in-depth interview on his biography. However, my research work on him revealed a man with many positives and I am hoping that this article would inspire the youth further.

Even though Dr Kunbuor is generally known to be a politician, who is currently the Interior Minister, most people may be unaware of his immense contribution to the academia. Apart from his field of academic experience including socio-legal research in Law and Development, specialising in law and Economic Relations, Dr Kunbuor also has extensive knowledge in Law and Taxation.

As a multi-task person, his expertise in the financial sector include Banking and Securities Regulations, Corporate Finance and law on pensions.

In the telecommunication sector, Dr Kunbuor is not a novice and is well-versed in Telecommunications and Broadcasting regulations. He is also an expert on security sector Governance, constitutional law and Human Rights and Development.

Dr Kunbuor’s rich work experience both as a politician and an academician, makes him a repository of knowledge who inspires most of the youth in Ghana in general and the Upper West Region, where he hails from, in particular.

He has nine publications to his credit and once lectured at the Ghana School of Law on part time basis. Prior to this, Dr Kunbuor was a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. He was responsible for holding seminars for undergraduate students in constitutional and Administrative Law as well as Law and Development programmes, among others.

In the mid 90’s, Dr Kunbuor was the Director of the Ghana Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, responsible for operations, general investigations and complaints of Human Rights violations.

On the political front, Dr Kunbuor through hard work and dedication is currently the Interior Minister, after he was elevated from a Deputy Minister of Health to a Minister of Health under the current administration of Professor John Atta Mills.

Dr Kunbuor has been a Member of Parliament for Lawra-Nandom in the third and fourth Parliament of Ghana. Due to his expertise, he has served on several committees while in Parliament including the ranking member for Finance, ranking member of Defence /Interior Parliamentary Committees.

He also served as a Member of Parliament of the Constitutional, Parliamentary and Legal committees as well as the Subsidiary Legislation; Judiciary and standing order committee during the same period.

In his capacity both as a politician and academician, Dr Kunbuor presented selected papers on these topics “The concept of Security and the New International Security Regime” and “the issue of poverty in Northern Ghana”.

The others are “Techniques for Investigating Fraud and Corruption — The Ghanaian experience” and “New Consciousness on Human Rights and Administrative Abuses”.

Dr Kunbuor’s zeal in research cannot be overemphasised, as he is currently researching on two topical areas of interest to him.

Excellence is Dr Kunbuor’s hallmark and he has demonstrated this by receiving awards including the British Chevening Scholarship and the University of Warwick Overseas Students Award (OSSA) Doctoral Award. Others are distinguished Performance as Ranking Member of the Defence /Interior Committee of the Third and Fourth Republic of Ghana as well as Minister of the Year 2010 award.

The adage all work and no play applies to Dr Kunbuor, who apart from his busy political and academic endeavours, likes to play Lawn tennis, listen to music and read widely.

He is also multi-lingual and speaks English, Hausa and Dagaare. Dr Kunbuor is married to Victoria Kunbuor and they are blessed with three lovely children.

I have taken an interest in tracking the background of politicians and to find out who they are; where they are coming from; and what they bring to the political table that makes them tick.

I have started with Dr Benjamin Kunbuor.