Emmanuel Dannsa Appiah
A private legal practitioner, Emmanuel Dannsa Appiah, has called on the Chief Justice (CJ) to comply with Section 15 of the Office of Special Prosecutor Act, 2017, Act 959 in as far as a petition for the removal of Kissi Agyebeng as Special Prosecutor is concerned.
According to him, whilst administrative officers exercise a level of discretion, this is not the case when a law sets out a specific timeline by which an act is to be done.
Mr. Dannsa Appiah is a member of the law firm Archer, Archer, and Co. of Cantonments.
Section 15 of the Special Prosecutor Act, 2017, Act 959 gives the Chief Justice thirty days to come out with a determination whether a petition for the removal of the Special Prosecutor provides prima facie grounds.
When the Chief Justice decides that the petition has established a prima facie case against the Special Prosecutor, the Chief Justice shall then set up a committee to investigate the petition and come out with a determination whether the Special Prosecutor should be removed or not.
On October 18, 2024, Kenneth Agyei Kuranchie, an Accra-based lawyer, petitioned the President for the removal of Mr. Kissi Agyebeng as Special Prosecutor.
The President replied in a letter dated November 1, 2024 that he had received the petition and has since forwarded it to the Chief Justice.
However, since then, the matter seems to have suffered a ‘quiet death’.
If President Akufo-Addo forwarded the petition to the Chief Justice immediately after receiving it, the time for the CJ to determine prima facie would have passed by November 18, 2024.
If she received the petition on November 1, 2024, she is expected by Section 15 of the Office of Special Prosecutor Act, 2017, Act 959, to determine by December 1, 2024.
“We can say that the time for the Chief Justice to communicate her decision on prima facie has long passed.
“She must act timeously by complying with Section 15 of the Office of Special Prosecutor Act, 2017, Act 959.
“It would be ironic, that a petition would be filed based on lack of observance of law, only for the institution to investigate such a petition to turn out itself to be in breach of the law,” Mr. Dannsa stated.
On October 18, 2024, Mr. Kuranchie, who is also a journalist, wrote to the President stating that Mr. Agyebeng had invited the Federal Bureau of Investigations to conduct background checks and polygraph tests for officers working in the Office of Special Prosecutor, and that in his opinion, this is a breach of the Data Commission Act, the Official Secrets Act and hence Section 15 of the Office of Special Prosecutor Act, 2017, which then triggers the threshold for the removal of Mr. Kissi Agyebeng as Special Prosecutor.
BY Daniel Bampoe