A legal battle now before Ghana’s Supreme Court is raising fresh questions about the independence of the Office of the Special Prosecutor and the future of the country’s anti-corruption fight. At the centre of the case is whether the Special Prosecutor can initiate prosecutions without prior approval from the Attorney General.
In this opinion piece, the Good Governance Africa – West African Regional Office (GGA-WARO) argues that the outcome of the case could have far-reaching consequences for accountability and the rule of law in Ghana.
By the GGA-WARO Anti-Corruption Desk
The Attorney General’s challenge to the OSP’s prosecutorial independence is not a legal housekeeping exercise. It is an attempt to place a political lock on the courtroom door.
There is a quiet but consequential battle unfolding in Ghana’s Supreme Court. On one side stands the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) — a young but vital institution built specifically to take on the kind of grand corruption that other state agencies have found politically inconvenient to pursue. On the other side is the Attorney General’s Office, which is seeking a court order that would require the OSP to obtain prior AG approval before initiating any prosecution. If that argument prevails, Ghana will not have reformed its anti-corruption machinery. It will have quietly switched it off.
Let us be direct about what is at stake. The OSP was not established to duplicate existing structures. It was established because those existing structures had failed. Corruption cases involving powerful public figures have a troubling history in this country of stalling, disappearing, or being quietly shelved. The OSP was designed to be different, precisely because it was designed to be independent. Its power to investigate and prosecute without first seeking a green light from a politically appointed office was not a drafting oversight. It was the whole point.
“Requiring the OSP to seek prosecutorial clearance from the AG’s office is not a procedural refinement. It is the insertion of a political veto into what must be a purely legal process.”
The AG’s case rests on Article 88 of the 1992 Constitution, which gives the AG authority as the State’s principal prosecutor. That provision exists, and it matters. But it cannot be read in a vacuum. Parliament, acting within its constitutional mandate, passed Act 959 in 2017 to address what Article 88 alone could not. Good constitutional interpretation asks how provisions can work together, not which one can be used to strangle the other. The OSP’s independence does not erase the AG’s role. It complements it by filling a specific gap that years of experience had exposed.
Across the region, we have seen this story before. When independent prosecutors are forced to route their decisions through executive offices, cases against powerful people tend not to reach trial. It happens in country after country, and each time it happens the explanation is procedural, the outcome is political, and the cost is borne by ordinary citizens who needed those institutions to work. Ghana has had the chance to build something different. That chance is now under threat.
It is also worth asking what is not in the AG’s petition. There is no proposal to fund the OSP better, to expand its jurisdiction, or to give it stronger investigative tools. There is no plan to fix the institutional gaps that have slowed its work. The petition focuses entirely on who controls the prosecution decision. When that is the only thing being contested, the intent becomes difficult to misread.
Good Governance Africa – West African Regional Office stands firmly with the OSP’s mandate and calls on the Supreme Court to protect it. We also call on every Ghanaian who has ever demanded accountability from a public official to pay attention to this case. Because if the OSP loses its independence in that courtroom, it is not the institution that loses. It is the rest of us.
Good Governance Africa – West African Regional Office (GGA-WARO) is a civil society organisation dedicated to promoting transparent and accountable governance across West Africa. This article may be freely republished with attribution.
